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AMERICAN 


ARCHITECTURE 

\\  ■'  % V 

Stubies 

BY 

MONTGOMERY  SCHUYLER 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


NEW  YORK 

HARPER  & BROTHERS,  PUBLISHERS 
1892 


7-£  o 


Copyright,  1892,  by  Harper  & Brothers. 


All  rights  reserved. 


2-  2-7%' 


TO 

K.  L.  S. 


* 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Point  of  View  ..........  i 

Concerning  Oueen  Anne  .........  6 

The  Vanderbilt  Houses  ........  52 

The  Brooklyn  Bridge  as  a Monument  . ...  68 

An  American  Cathedral  86 

Glimpses  of  Western  Architecture: 

I.  Chicago 112 

II.  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis  .....  168 


ILL  USTRA  TIONS 


New  York: 

PAGE 

Recessed  Balcony,  W.  H.  Vanderbilt’s  House  ...  13 

Doorways  on  Madison  Avenue 17 

Oriel  of  House  in  Fifty-Fifth  Street  ....  19 

Doorway,  Fifth  Avenue,  Below  Seventy-Fifth  Street.  21 

House  in  Fifty-Sixth  Street 22 

Houses  in  Madison  Avenue  ....  25 

Doorway  at  Fifth  Avenue  and  Sixty-Seventh  Street.  33 
Glimpse  of  Columbia  College  from  Madison  Avenue.  35 

From  Governor  Tilden’s  House 37 

Oriel  in  W.  K.  Vanderbilt’s  House 39 

Rear  of  Roof,  House  of  Cornelius  Vanderbilt,  Fifth 

Avenue 42 

Doorway  of  Guernsey  Building,  Broadway  ....  44 

United  Bank  Building ....  46 

Post  Building  ....  . . 47 

Gateway  of  Mills  Building.  .........  49 

The  Vanderbilt  Houses: 

House  of  W.  K.  Vanderbilt 53 

House  of  Cornelius  Vanderbilt 39 

Houses  of  W.  H.  Vanderbilt 63 

Post  and  Railing,  W.  H.  Vanderbilt’s  House  ...  67 

The  Brooklyn  Bridge: 

The  Bridge  from  the  Brooklyn  Side 69 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


viii 

PAGE 

Bridge  at  Minneapolis  . 75 

Section  of  Brooklyn  Bridge  Tower 77 

Section  of  Anchorage.  (Side  View.)  ......  81 

An  American  Cathedral: 

Proposed  Cathedrat.  at  Albany 87 

West  Elevation. 91 

East  Elevation .......  95 

Ground-Plan 99 

Transverse  Section  through  Choir 105 

Chicago  : 

Clock  Tower,  Dearborn  Station  ......  112 

From  the  City  and  County  Building  ......  118 

The  Art  Institute 121 

Entrance  to  the  Art  Institute  . ....  123 

Balcony  of  Auditorium 125 

Tower  of  Auditorium 127 

The  Field  Building 131 

Arcade  from  the  Studebaker  Building 135 

The  Owings  Building 139 

Corner  of  Insurance  Exchange  ...  ....  141 

Entrance  to  the  Phcenix  Building  ......  145 

Oriel,  Phcenix  Building 147 

Janua  Richardsoniensis 152 

Oriel  of  Dwelling  154 

Dwelling  in  Lake  Shore  Drive 156 

Dwelling  in  Prairie  Avenue 158 

Front  in  Dearborn  Avenue 163 

A House  of  Bowlders 165 

A Byzantine  Corbel 166 

St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis  : 

Public  Library,  Minneapolis 176 

Entrance  to  Public  Library,  Minneapolis  , . . 177 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


IX 


PAGE 

The  People’s  Church,  St.  Paul 178 

Unitarian  Church,  Minneapolis 180 

Presbyterian  Church,  St.  Paul 182 

West  Hotel,  Minneapolis 183 

Lumber  Exchange,  Minneapolis 187 

Entrance  to  Bank  of  Commerce,  Minneapolis  . . 188 

Corner  of  Bank  of  Commerce,  Minneapolis  . . . 190 

The  “Globe”  Building,  Minneapolis 191 

Entrance  to  “Pioneer  Press”  Building,  St.  Paul  . 192 

Corner  of  “Pioneer  Press”  Building 193 

Bank  of  Minnesota,  St.  Paul  ....  ....  195 

Top  of  New  York  Life  Insurance  Building,  St. 

Paul 196 

Entrance  to  New  York  Life  Insurance  Building, 

St.  Paul 198 

New  York  Life  Insurance  Building,  Minneapolis.  200 
Vestibule  of  New  York  Life  Insurance  Building, 

Minneapolis 201 

Dwelling  in  Minneapolis 202 

Dwelling  in  St.  Paul.  ...........  203 

Porte-Cochere,  St.  Paul  ...  204 

Porch  in  St.  Paul  ....  205 

From  a Dwelling  in  St.  Paul 206 

Dwellings  in  St.  Paul 207 

Porch  in  St.  Paul  ............  209 


THE  POINT  OF  VIEW 


I "HE  connection  between  the  papers  here  collected, 
in  addition  to  their  common  subject-matter,  is  their 
common  point  of  view.  Of  this  I do  not  know  that  I 
can  make  a clearer  or  briefer  statement  than  I made 
in  a speech  delivered,  in  response  to  the  toast  of  “Ar- 
chitecture,” at  the  fifth  annual  banquet  of  the  National 
Association  of  Builders,  given  February  12,  1891,  at 
the  Lenox  Lyceum,  in  New  York.  Accordingly  I re- 
print here  the  report  of  my  remarks : 


“ Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen  of  the  National 
Association  of  Builders, — You  will  not  expect  from 
me,  in  responding  to  this  toast,  any  exhibition  of  that 
facetious  spirit  with  which  some  of  my  predecessors 
have  entertained  you.  It  has,  indeed,  been  said  that 
American  humor  has  never  found  full  expression  ex- 
cept in  architecture.  It  has  also  been  said  by  an  hon- 
ored friend  of  mine,  himself  an  architect,  whom  I hoped 
to  see  here  to-night,  that  American  architecture  was  the 
art  of  covering  one  tiling  with  another  thins:  to  imitate 
a third  thing,  which,  if  genuine,  would  not  be  desirable. 
But  I hope  you  will  agree  with  me  that,  though  the 
expression  is  comic,  the  fact,  so  far  as  it  is  a fact,  is 
1 


o 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


serious  even  to  sadness.  It  is  a great  pleasure  and  a 
great  privilege  for  me  to  speak  to  this  sentiment,  and 
it  is  especially  a privilege  for  me  to  speak  upon  it  to 
an  association  of  builders,  because  it  seems  to  me  that 
the  real,  radical  defect  of  modern  architecture  in  gen- 
eral, if  not  of  American  architecture  in  particular,  is 
the  estrangement  between  architecture  and  building — 
between  the  poetry  and  the  prose,  so  to  speak,  of  the 
art  of  building,  which  can  never  be  disjoined  without 
injury  to  both.  If  you  look  into  any  dictionary  or  into 
any  cyclopaedia  under  ‘architecture,’  you  will  find  that 
it  is  the  art  of  building;  but  I don’t  think  that  you 
would  arrive  at  that  definition  from  an  inspection  of 
the  streets  of  any  modern  city.  I think,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  if  you  were  to  scrape  down  to  the  face  of 
the  main  wall  of  the  buildings  of  these  streets,  you 
would  find  that  you  had  simply  removed  all  the  archi- 
tecture, and  that  you  had  left  the  buildings  as  good  as 
ever;  that  is  to  say,  the  buildings  in  which  the  defi- 
nition I have  quoted  is  illustrated  are  in  the  minority, 
and  the  buildings  of  which  I have  just  spoken  are  in 
the  majority ; and  the  more  architectural  pretensions 
the  building  has,  the  more  apt  it  is  to  illustrate  this  de- 
fect of  which  I have  spoken. 

“ It  is,  I believe,  historically  true,  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  with  one  conspicuous  exception,  that  down  to 
the  Italian  Renaissance,  some  four  centuries  ago,  the 
architect  was  himself  a builder.  The  exception  is  the 
classical  period  in  Rome.  The  Grecian  builders,  as  all 
of  you  know,  had  taken  the  simplest  possible  construc- 
tion, that  of  the  post  and  lintel,  two  uprights  carrying 
a crossbeam,  and  they  had  developed  that  into  a refined 
and  beautiful  thing.  The  Romans  admired  that,  and 
they  wished  to  reproduce  it  in  their  own  buildings,  but 
the  construction  of  their  own  buildings  was  an  arched 


THE  POINT  OF  VIEW 


3 


construction  ; it  was  a wall  pierced  with  arches.  They 
did  not  develop  that  construction  into  what  it  might 
have  been.  They  simply  pierced  their  wall  with  arches 
and  overlaid  it  with  an  envelope  of  the  artistic  expression 
of  another  construction,  which  they  coarsened  in  the 
process.  According  to  some  accounts,  they  hired  Greek 
decorators  to  overlay  it  with  this  architecture  which 
had  nothing  to  do  with  it,  and  there  was  the  first  illus- 
tration in  all  history  of  this  difference  between  the  art 
of  architecture  and  the  art  of  building.  In  every  other 
country  in  the  world  the  architect  had  been  the  builder. 
I think  that  is  true  down  to  the  Italian  Renaissance ; 
and  then  building  was  really  a lost  art.  There  hadn’t 
been  anything  really  built  in  the  fifteenth  century;  and 
they  began  to  employ  general  artists,  painters  and  sculp- 
tors and  goldsmiths,  to  design  their  buildings,  and  these 
men  had  no  models  before  them  except  this  Grecian- 
Roman  architecture  of  which  I speak.*  These  men 
reproduced  that  in  their  designs,  and  left  the  builder  to 
construct  it  the  best  way  he  could,  and  that,  I am  told, 
is  a process  which  sometimes  prevails  in  the  present 
time.  But  before  that  everything  had  been  a simple 
development  of  the  construction  and  the  material  of 
the  building,  and  since  that  men  have  thought  they  per- 
ceived that  architecture  was  one  thing  and  building 
was  another,  and  they  have  gone  on  to  design  build- 
ings without  any  sort  of  reference  to  the  materials  of 
which  they  were  composed,  or  the  manner  in  which 
they  were  put  together.  That  is  the  origin  of  the 
exclusively  modern  practice  of  working  in  architectural 


* Of  course  this  needs  modification,  since  the  mediaeval  buildings  of 
Italy  were  accessible  to  the  designers  of  the  Renaissance.  What  I 
suppose  I had  in  mind  was  to  point  out  that  they  had  no  knowledge 
of  the  original  Grecian  monuments,  from  which  the  classical  Roman 
architecture  was  derived. 


4 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


styles,  as  it  is  called.  Why,  before  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, I don’t  suppose  any  man  who  began  to  build  a 
building  ever  thought  in  what  style  he  should  compose 
it  any  more  than  I thought  before  I got  up  here  in 
what  language  I should  address  you ; he  simply  built 
in  the  language  to  which  he  was  accustomed  and  which 
he  knew.  You  will  find  this  perfect  truth  is  the  great 
charm  of  Grecian  architecture,  and  ten  or  fifteen  cen- 
turies later  it  was  the  sweat  charm  of  Gothic  architect- 

O 

ure;  that  is  to  say,  that  it  was  founded  upon  fact,  that 
it  was  the  truth,  that  it  was  the  thing  the  man  was 
doing  that  he  was  concerned  about,  even  in  those  pieces 
of  architecture  which  seem  to  us  the  most  exuberant, 
the  most  fantastic,  like  the  front  of  Rouen,  or  like  the 
cathedral  of  which  Longfellow  speaks,  as  you  all  re- 
member : 

"‘How  strange  the  sculptures  that  adorn  these  towers! 

This  crowd  of  statues,  in  whose  folded  sleeves 
Birds  build  their  nests ; while,  canopied  with  leaves, 

Parvis  and  portal  bloom  like  trellised  bowers, 

And  the  vast  minster  seems  a cross  of  flowers.’ 

Even  in  those  things  there  was  that  logical,  law-abiding, 
sensible,  practical  adherence  to  the  facts  of  construc- 
tion, to  the  art  of  building,  which  we  have  so  long  lost, 
and  which  I hope  we  are  getting  back  again. 

“ There  are  examples,  in  the  work  of  our  modern  archi- 
tecture, of  architects  who  design  with  this  same  truth, 
with  this  same  reality,  with  this  same  sincerity  that 
animated  the  old  builders  before  the  coming-in  of  this 
artificial  and  irrelevant  system  of  design,  and  one  of 
them  is  the  building  in  which  I am  informed  a great 
many  of  you  spent  last  evening;  I mean  the  Casino.  I 
don’t  know  any  more  admirable  illustration  of  real,  genu- 
ine, modern  architecture  than  that  building ; and  among 
all  its  merits  I don't  know  any  merit  greater  than  the 


THE  POINT  OF  VIEW 


5 


fidelity  with  which  the  design  follows  the  facts  of  struct- 
ure in  the  features,  in  the  material,  in  everything.  It  'is 
a building  in  baked  clay;  there  isn’t  a feature  in  it  in 
brick  or  in  terra-cotta  which  could  be  translated  into  any 
other  material  without  loss.  It  is  a beautiful,  adequate, 
modern  performance.  I say  this  without  any  reservation, 
because  unfortunately  the  genius  who,  in  great  part,  de- 
signed that  building  has  gone  from  us  ; and  there  are 
many  things  by  living  architects,  whom  I cannot  men- 
tion because  they  are  living,  which  exhibit  these  same 
merits.  There  is  one  other  example  that  I would  like 
to  mention  here,  because  many  of  you  know  his  work  ; 
I mean  the  late  John  Wellborn  Root,  of  Chicago.  I 
shouldn’t  mention  him  either  if  he  hadn’t,  unfortunately, 
gone  from  us.  Mr.  Root’s  buildings  exhibit  the  same 
true  sincerity — the  knowledge  of  the  material  with  which 
he  had  to  do,  the  fulfilment  of  the  purpose  which  he 
had  to  perform.  I don’t  know  any  greater  loss  that 
could  have  happened  to  the  architecture  of  this  coun- 
try and  to  the  architecture  of  the  future  than  that  man 
dying  before  his  prime.  These  are  stimulating  and 
fruitful  examples  to  the  architects  of  the  present  time 
to  bring  their  art  more  into  alliance,  more  into  union, 
more  into  identity,  with  the  art  of  building;  and  it  is  by 
these  means,  gentlemen,  and  by  these  means  only,  that 
we  can  ever  gain  a living,  a progressive,  a real  archi- 
tecture— the  architecture  of  the  future.” 


CONCERNING  QUEEN  ANNE* 


HE  new  departure  is  an  apt  name 
for  what  some  of  its  conductors  de- 
scribe as  the  new  “ school  ” in  archi- 
tecture and  decoration.  It  has  still, 
after  nearly  ten  years  of  almost  com- 
plete sway  among  the  young  archi- 
tects of  England  and  of  the  United 
States,  all  the  signs  of  a departure  — 
we  might  say  of  a hurried  departure — 
and  gives  no  hint  of  an  arrival,  or  even 
It  is,  in  fact,  a general  “breaking-up” 
in  building,  as  the  dispersion  of  Babel  was  in  speech, 
and  we  can  only  and  somewhat  desperately  hope  that 
the  utterances  of  every  man  upon  whom  a dialect  has 
suddenly  fallen  may  at  least  be  intelligible  to  himself. 
From  a “movement”  so  exclusively  centrifugal  that  it 
assumes  rather  the  character  of  an  explosion  than  of  an 
evolution,  not  much  achievement  can  be  looked  for.  In 
fact,  the  “movement”  has  not,  thus  far,  either  in  Eng- 
land or  in  the  United  States,  produced  a monument 
which  anybody  but  its  author  would  venture  to  pro- 
nounce very  good.  Not  to  go  back  to  the  times  when 
Gothic  architecture  was  vernacular  in  England,  it  has 
produced  nothing  which  can  be  put  in  competition  with 


of  a direction. 


Recent  Building  in  New  York,”  1883. 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


7 


the  works  either  of  the  English  classical  revival,  or  with 
the  works  of  the  English  Gothic  revival — with  St.  Paul’s 
and  the  Radcliffe  Library,  on  the  one  hand,  or  with 
Westminster  Palace  and  the  Manchester  Town-hall,  on 
the  other.  Before  the  “ movement  ” began,  the  architects 
of  Europe  and  America  were  divided  into  two  camps. 
They  professed  themselves  either  Renaissance  or  Gothic 
architects.  The  mediaevalists  acknowledged  a subjec- 
tion to  certain  principles  of  design.  The  classicists 
accepted  certain  forms  and  formula;  as  efficacious  and 
final.  They  were  both,  therefore,  under  some  restraint. 
But  the  new  movement  seems  to  mean  that  aspiring- 
genius  shall  not  be  fettered  by  mechanical  laws  or  aca- 
demic rules,  by  reason  or  by  revelation,  but  that  every 
architect  shall  build  what  is  right  in  his  own  eyes,  even 
if  analysis  finds  it  absurd  and  Vitruvius  condemns  it  as 
incorrect. 

“Oueen  Anne”  is  a comprehensive  name  which  has 
been  made  to  cover  a multitude  of  incongruities,  includ- 
ing, indeed,  the  bulk  of  recent  work  which  otherwise 
defies  classification,  and  there  is  a convenient  vague- 
ness about  the  term  which  fits  it  for  that  use.  But  it 
is  rather  noteworthy  that  the  effect  of  what  is  most  spe- 
cifically known  as  Queen  Anne  is  to  restrain  the  exu- 
berances of  design.  Whoever  recalls  Viollet-le-Duc's 
pregnant  saying,  that  “only  primitive  sources  supply 
the  energy  for  a long  career,”  would  scarcely  select  the 
reign  of  Queen  Anne  out  of  all  English  history  for  a 
point  of  departure  in  the  history  of  any  one  of  the  plastic 
arts.  The  bloated  Renaissance  of  Wren’s  successors, 
such  as  is  shown  in  Queen’s  College  and  in  Aldrich’s 
church  architecture  in  Oxford,  was  its  distinctive  attain- 
ment in  architecture.  The  minute  and  ingenious  wood- 
carving of  Grinling  Gibbons  was  its  distinctive  attain- 
ment  in  decoration.  Nothing  could  show  more  forci- 


8 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


bly  the  degeneracy  of  art  at  the  period  which  of  late 
years  has  been  represented  as  an  aesthetic  renascence 
than  the  acceptance  of  these  wood-carvings,  which  in 
execution  and  all  technical  qualities  are  as  complete, 
and  in  design  and  all  imaginative  qualities  are  as  trivial 
and  commonplace,  as  contemporary  Italian  sculpture, 
as  works  of  art  comparable  to  the  graceful  inventions 
of  Jean  Goujon,  and  clearly  preferable  to  the  some- 
times rude  but  always  purposeful  decoration  of  mediae- 
val churches. 

The  revivalists  of  Queen  Anne  have  not  confined 
their  attentions  to  the  reign  of  that  sovereign.  They 
have  searched  the  Jacobean  and  the  Georgian  periods 
as  well,  and  have  sucked  the  dregs  of  the  whole  Eng- 
lish  Renaissance.  Unhappily,  nowhere  in  Europe  was 
the  Renaissance  so  unproductive  as  in  the  British  Isl- 
ands. It  was  so  unproductive,  indeed,  that  Continental 
historians  of  architecture  have  scarcely  taken  the  trouble 
to  look  it  up  or  to  refer  to  it  at  all.  Not  merely  since 
the  beginning  of  the  Gothic  revival,  but  since  the  begin- 
ning  of  the  Greek  revival  that  was  stimulated  by  the 
publication  of  Stuart’s  work  on  Athens,  in  which  for 
the  first  time  uncorrupted  Greek  types  could  be  stud- 
ied, what  contemporary  architects  have  ransacked  as  a 
treasury  was  considered  a mere  lumber-room,  and  fell 
not  so  much  into  disesteem  as  into  oblivion.  During 
two  generations  nobody  any  more  thought  of  studying 
the  works  of  English  architecture  from  Hawksmoor  to 
“ Capability”  Brown,  than  anybody  thought  of  studying 
the  poetry  of  Blackmore  and  Hayley.  The  attempt 
within  the  past  ten  years  to  raise  to  the  rank  of  inspi- 
rations the  relics  of  this  decadence,  which  for  years  had 
been  regarded  by  everybody  as  rather  ugly  and  ridicu- 
lous, is  one  of  the  strangest  episodes  in  the  strange  his- 
tory of  modern  architecture. 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


9 


Mr.  Norman  Shaw  has  been  the  chief  evangelist  of 
this  strange  revival.  Mr.  Shaw  is  a very  clever  designer, 
with  a special  felicity  in  piquant  and  picturesque  group- 
ings, which  he  had  shown  in  Gothic  work,  especially  in 
country-houses,  before  the  caprice  seized  him  of  unit- 
ing free  composition  with  classic  detail,  and  the  attempt 
at  this  union  is  what  is  most  distinctively  known  as 
Queen  Anne.  Whoever  considers  the  elements  of  this 
combination  would  hardly  hope  that  the  result  could  be 
a chemical  union,  or  more  than  a mechanical  mixture. 
Classic  detail  is  the  outcome  and  accompaniment  of 
the  simplest  construction  possible,  which  was  employed 
by  the  Greek  architects  in  the  simplest  combination 
possible,  and  precisely  because  it  was  so  simple  and  so 
primitive  they  were  enabled  to  reduce  it  to  an  “ order,” 
and  to  carry  it  to  a pitch  of  purity,  lucidity,  and  refine- 
ment to  which  the  most  enthusiastic  medievalist  will 
scarcely  maintain  that  more  complicated  constructions 
have  ever  attained.  But  this  very  perfection,  which  was 
only  attainable  when  life  was  simple  and  the  world  was 
young,  this  necessary  relation  between  the  construction 
and  the  detail  of  Greek  Doric,  makes  it  forever  impos- 
sible that  Greek  detail  should  be  successfully  “adapted” 
to  modern  buildings.  A late  writer  on  the  theory  of 
architecture  has  said  of  Greek  architecture:  “As  parti- 
sans of  its  historical  glory,  we  should  desire  that  it  re- 
main forever  in  its  historical  shrine.”  We  laugh  at  the 
men  of  two  generations  ago  who  covered  Europe  and 
America  with  private  and  public  buildings  in  repro- 
duction as  exact  as  they  could  contrive  of  Grecian 
temples.  But,  after  all,  if  the  Greek  temple  be  the  ulti- 
mate, consummate  flower,  not  only  of  all  actual  but  of 
all  possible  architectural  art,  were  not  these  men  wiser 
in  their  generation  than  their  successors  who  have  taken 
the  Greek  temple  to  pieces  and  tried  to  construct  mod- 


2 


IO 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


ern  buildings  out  of  its  fragments  ? There  is  even  some- 
thing touching  and  admirable,  in  this  view,  in  the  read- 
iness and  completeness  of  the  sacrifice  to  beauty  which 
the  reproducers  of  the  Greek  temples  made  of  all  their 
merely  material  comforts  and  conveniences,  something 
that  we  miss  in  the  adapters.  The  Romans  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  have  attempted  this  adaptation.  They  built 
Roman  buildings  for  purposes  and  by  methods  which 
had  never  entered  the  minds  of  Greek  architects  to  con- 
ceive, and  they  built  them  with  no  more  thought  of  art 
than  enters  the  mind  of  a modern  railway  engineer  in 
designing  a truss  bridge.  After  they  were  designed  ac- 
cording to  their  requirements  it  was  that  the  Roman 
engineer  overlaid  them  with  an  irrelevant  trellis  of  Greek 
architecture,  debasing  and  corrupting  the  Greek  archi- 
tecture in  the  process.  And  it  is  this  hybrid  architect- 
ure, which  analysis  would  at  once  have  dissolved  into 
its  component  parts,  that  was  accepted  without  analysis 
as  the  starting-point  of  “ the  new  departure  ” of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  and  the  ultimate  English  debasement  of 
which  in  the  eighteenth  is  taken  by  the  contemporary 
architects  of  England  and  America  as  the  starting-point 
of  the  new  departure  in  the  nineteenth.  It  cannot  be 
said  that  Mr.  Norman  Shaw  and  his  followers  have  suc- 
ceeded in  the  task  of  combining  free  composition  with 
classic  detail,  which  the  Romans  forbore  to  attempt,  and 
in  which  the  French  architects  of  the  sixteenth  century 
failed.  Every  attempt  to  fit  antique  detail  to  a build- 
ing faithfully  designed  to  meet  modern  requirements 
shows  that  it  cannot  be  so  fitted  without  being  trans- 
formed, and — since  the  sole  excuse  for  the  attempt  is 
that  it  cannot  be  bettered  — without  being  debased. 
What  the  Queen  Anne  men  have  done  is  virtually  what 
the  Romans  did.  They  have  shirked  the  impossible 
problem  they  unnecessarily  imposed  upon  themselves, 


CONCERNING  QUEEN  ANNE  IX 

and  have  either  overlaid  or  inlaid  their  buildings  with 
their  architecture.  Of  course  the  result  of  this  process 
can  no  more  be  accepted  as  an  architectural  organism 
than  if  they  had  hung  water-proof  paper  on  the  outer 
walls  instead  of  decorating  them  with  carving,  or  mould- 
ing, or  what  not,  built  in  the  walls,  but  no  more  archi- 
tecturally related  to  them  than  the  paper-hanging.  But 
this  is  precisely  what  has  been  done  in  every  “free  clas- 
sic ” building,  with  more  or  less  skill  and  dissimulation 
of  the  process.  It  is  seldom  done  with  the  winning  can- 
dor with  which  it  has  been  done  in  the  house  of  Mr.  W. 
H.  Vanderbilt  in  New  York,  which  is  officially  described 
as  a specimen  of  the  “ Greek  Renaissance,”  possibly  be- 
cause its  architectural  details  are  all  Roman.  In  that 
edifice  two  bands  of  exquisite  carving — exquisite  in  ex- 
ecution, that  is  to  say — which  girdle  the  building,  sim- 
ply occur  on  the  wall  at  levels  where  they  are  quite 
meaningless  in  relation  to  the  building;  where,  conse- 
quently, they  would  not  help  the  expression  of  the  build- 
ing, if  the  building  could  be  said  to  have  any  expression 
beyond  that  of  settled  gloom;  and  where  the  irrelevant 
carving,  not  being  framed  by  itself,  would  contradict  the 
expression  of  a structure  which  was  architecturally,  and 
not  alone  mechanically,  a building.  How  much  this 
carving  would  gain  by  being  framed  away,  so  that  if  it 
did  not  help,  it  should  at  least  not  injure,  the  architect- 
ure to  which  it  is  attached,  may  be  seen  by  comparing 
these  Vanderbilt  houses  with  a brown-stone  house,  in 
formal  Renaissance,  in  upper  Fifth  Avenue,  near  Sixty- 
ninth  Street,  where  the  carving  is  neither  better  cut  nor 
more  abundant  than  that  of  the  Vanderbilt  houses,  but 
where  its  disposition  at  least  appears  to  be  premeditated, 
and  not  casual. 

It  would  scarcely  be  worth  while  to  point  out  the 
faults  of  designs,  if  they  can  even  be  described  as  such, 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


1 2 

so  generally  disesteemed  as  those  of  the  two  houses 
built  for  Mr.  W.  H.  Vanderbilt,  “those  boxes  of  brown 
stone  with  architecture  applique.”  But  it  is  worth  point- 
ing out  that  the  radical  error,  which  in  these  appears  so 
crudely  and  naively  as  to  be  patent  to  the  wayfaring 
man  who  has  never  thought  about  architecture,  is  la- 
tent in  all  the  works  of  the  Queen  Anne  movement — to 
which  these  houses  do  not  specifically  belong  — and 
must  vitiate  every  attempt  to  adjust  classic  detail  to 
free  and  modern  composition.  Classic  detail  cannot 
grow  out  of  modern  structures  faithfully  designed  for 
modern  purposes  as  it  grows  out  of  antique  structure, 
or  as  Gothic  ornament  grows  out  of  Gothic  structure, 
like  an  efflorescence.  It  must  be  “adjusted”  as  visibly 
an  after-thought,  and  to  say  this  is  to  say  that  in  all 
Queen  Anne  buildings  the  architecture  is  applique. 

However,  to  disparage  Queen  Anne  is  not  to  explain 
its  acceptance.  It  looks  like  a mere  masquerade  of 
nineteenth-century  men  in  eighteenth-century  clothes, 
and  with  many  of  its  practitioners  it  is  no  more.  In 
England  it  seems  to  have  originated  as  a caprice  by 
which  a clever  and  dashing  but  by  no  means  epoch- 
making  architect  misled  the  younger  and  weaker  of  his 
brethren.  In  this  country,  which  had  never  been  much 
more  architecturally  than  an  English  colony,  there 
seemed  special  reasons  for  following  the  new  fashion 
of  being  old-fashioned.  American  architects,  and  Amer- 
ican builders  before  there  were  any  American  architects, 
had  been  exhorted,  as  they  have  lately  been  exhorted 
again,  to  do  something  distinctively  American.  The 
colonial  building,  which  was  done  by  trained  English 
mechanics,  was  of  the  same  character  as  the  contempo- 
rary domestic  work  of  England,  and  showed  in  its  orna- 
ment the  same  unreflecting  acceptance  of  a set  of  forms 
and  formulae  bequeathed  as  a tradition  of  the  trade  and 


,<ECESSED  EALC0NY-  w-  h.  Vanderbilt's  house,  fifth  avenue. 
Herter  Brothers,  Architects. 


CONCERNING  QUEEN  ANNE 


15 


part  of  the  outfit  of  a journeyman.  Although  Jefferson 
complained  that  in  his  time  and  in  rural  Virginia  it  was 
impossible  to  “ find  a workman  who  could  draw  an  or- 
der,” it  is  evident  that  there  was  no  difficulty  of  that 
kind  in  other  parts  of  the  country.  These  trained  work- 
men, it  is  to  be  noted,  were  all  carpenters,  and  there  is 
probably  no  work  in  stone  which  shows  an  equal  pre- 
cision and  facility  in  workmanship.  Such  buildings  as 
the  New  York  City  Hall  and  the  Albany  Academy 
were  clearly  the  work  of  architects  of  culture  according 
to  the  standard  of  the  time.  The  only  architectural 
qualities  of  the  works  of  the  mechanics  were  the  moder- 
ation and  respectability  of  detail,  which  they  had  learned 
as  part  of  their  trade,  and  it  is  quite  absurd  to  ascribe 
to  these  buildings  any  value  as  works  of  art.  It  is  par- 
ticularly absurd  to  assign  the  degradation  of  house- 
building which  undoubtedly  followed,  and  which  made 
the  typical  American  house,  after  the  Greek  temple  had 
spent  its  force,  the  most  vulgar  habitation  ever  built  by 
man,  to  the  substitution  of  book-learned  architects  for 
handicraftsmen.  People  talk  as  if  the  middle  part  of 
Fifth  Avenue,  the  brown-stone  high-stoop  house  with 
its  bloated  detail,  which  displaced  the  prim  precision  of 
the  older  work,  had  been  done  by  educated  architects. 
In  fact,  there  was  hardly  a single  building  put  up  in 
New  York  after  the  design  of  an  educated  architect  be- 
tween the  works  we  have  mentioned  and  the  erection  of 
Trinity  Church  by  Mr.  Upjohn  in  1845,  which  not  only 
marked  a great  advance  over  anything  that  had  been 
done  before,  but  began  the  Gothic  revival  to  which  we 
directly  or  indirectly  owe  whatever  of  merit  has  been 
done  since,  including  so  much  of  Queen  Anne  as,  not 
being  Oueen  Anne,  is  good.  But  the  bulk  of  the  build- 
ing which  gave  its  architectural  character  to  New  York 
and  to  the  country  continued  to  be  done  by  mechanics, 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


16 

who  continued,  so  far  as  they  could,  to  supply  the  de- 
mand of  the  market,  who  gradually  lost  the  training 
their  predecessors  had  enjoyed,  and  who  lost  also  all 
sense  of  the  necessity  for  that  training  in  the  new 
demand  that  their  work  should  be,  above  all  things, 
“ American.”  As  the  slang  of  to-day  puts  it,  they  were 
exhorted,  as  the  architects  are  still  sometimes  exhorted, 
to  “talk  United  States.”  They  might  have  answered 
that  there  was  no  such  language,  and  that  a few  bits  of 
slang  did  not  constitute  a poetical  vocabulary.  The 
feeling  which  urges  an  artist  to  be  patriotic  by  being 
different  from  other  people  not  long  ago  led  Mr.  Walt 
Whitman  to  resent  the  absence  of  an  “autochthonous” 
poetry,  and  has  lately  led  a newspaper  writer  to  call  the 
attention  of  a New  England  building  committee  to  the 
low  cabin  as  the  most  suitable  motive  for  a town-hall 

O 

they  are  going  to  build. 

The  Northern  reader  notes  with  mild  amusement  the 
occasional  resentment  in  the  Southern  press  of  the  ab- 
sence of  a “distinctive  Southern  literature,”  and  per- 
ceives the  plaint  to  be  provincial ; but  he  is  not  so  quick 
to  perceive  that  his  own  clamor  for  an  American  this  or 
that  is  equally  provincial.  The  hard  lot  of  the  Ameri- 
can painter  has  often  been  bewailed,  in  that,  when  he 
has  tried  to  rid  himself  of  his  provincialism  by  learning 
to  paint,  and  has  learned  to  paint  more  or  less  as  other 
men  do  who  have  learned  to  paint,  he  is  straightway  be- 
rated for  not  being  provincial.  If  American  literature 
or  painting  or  architecture  be  good,  the  Americanism  of 
it  may  safely  be  left  to  take  care  of  itself.  But  a man 
cannot  be  expected  to  innovate  to  much  purpose  upon 
usages  with  which  he  is  unfamiliar;  and  the  effects 
which  Mr.  Whitman’s  admonition  to  his  fellow-poets  to 
“ fix  their  verses  to  the  gauge  of  the  round  globe  ” would 
probably  have  upon  an  aspiring  young  poet,  conscious 


title,  or  without  any  sufficient  provocation  described 
themselves  as  architects.  They  undoubtedly  attained 
3 


CONCERNING  QUEEN  ANNE 

of  genius,  but  weak  in  his  parts  of  speech,  are  the  effects 
which  the  demand  for  aboriginality  actually  had  upon 
the  race  of  builders,  whether  they  were  content  with  that 


DOORWAYS  ON  MADISON  AVENUE. 

G.  E.  Harney,  and  McKim,  Mead,  & White,  Architects. 


i8 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


difference,  and  their  works  did  not  remind  the  travelled 
observer  of  any  of  the  masterpieces  of  Europe.  It  is  quite 
conceivable  and  not  at  all  discreditable  that  the  wild  work 
of  Broadway  and  of  Fifth  Avenue  should  have  led  archi- 
tects of  sensibility  to  cast  many  longing,  lingering  looks 
behind  at  the  decorum  of  the  Bowling  Green  and  Wash- 
ington Square,  and  to  sigh  for  a return  of  the  times  when 
the  common  street  architecture  of  New  York  was  sober 
and  respectable,  even  if  it  was  conventional  and  stupid. 

This  justifiable  preference  for  Bowling  Green  and 
Washington  Square  and  St.  John’s  Park  over  Broad- 
way and  Madison  Square  and  Murray  Hill,  for  an  archi- 
tecture confessedly  colonial  over  an  architecture  aggres- 
sively provincial,  is  no  doubt  the  explanation  why  so 
many  of  our  younger  architects  made  haste  to  fall  in 
behind  the  Oueen  Anne  standard.  What  we  really 
have  a right  to  blame  them  for  is  for  not  so  far  analyz- 
ing their  own  emotions  as  to  discover  that  the  qualities 
they  admired  in  the  older  work,  or  admired  by  compari- 
son with  the  newer,  were  not  dependent  upon  the  actual 
details  in  which  they  found  them.  To  be  “content  to 
dwell  in  decencies  forever  ” was  not  considered  the  mark 
of  a lofty  character  even  by  a poet  of  the  time  of  Queen 
Anne.  If  virtue  were,  indeed,  “ too  painful  an  endeavor,” 
and  if  there  were  no  choice  except  between  the  state  of 
dwelling  in  decencies  and  the  state  of  dwelling  in  inde- 
cencies forever,  we  could  but  admit  that  they  had  chosen 
the  better  part.  But  they  were  not,  in  fact,  confined  to 
a choice  between  these  alternatives.  The  Gothic  revi- 
val in  England,  after  twenty  years,  had  succeeded  in 
establishing  something  much  more  like  a real  vernacu- 

o o 

lar  architecture  than  had  been  known  in  England  before 
since  the  building  of  the  cathedrals  — an  architecture 
which,  although  starting  from  formulas  and  traditions, 
had  attained  to  principles,  and  was  true,  earnest,  and 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


19 


alive.  It  was  quite  inevitable  that  it  should  be  crude 
in  proportion  as  it  was  alive,  according  to  the  frankness 
with  which  it  recognized  that  we  live  in  times  unknown 
to  the  ancients,  and  en- 
deavored to  respond 
with  changes  in  its 
organism  to  changes 
wrought  in  its  envi- 
ronment by  new  re- 
quirements and  new 
knowledge, with  forms 
necessarily  rude,  in- 
choate, embryonic,  as 
beseems  the  formative 
period  of  letters  and 
of  arts  as  of  life,  in 
contrast  with  the  ul- 
timate refinement 
which  is  the  mark  of 
a completed  develop- 
ment. But  that  these 
crudities  would  be  re- 
fined was  also  inevi- 
table ; that  they  were 
in  process  of  refine- 
ment was  apparent. 

Another  generation 
of  artists  as  earnest 
as  those  who  began 

o 

the  Gothic  revival 
might  have  brought 
this  rough  and  swell- 
ing bud  to  a splendid  blossom.  But  in  an  evil  hour,  and 
under  a strange  spell,  the  young  architects  of  the  United 
States  followed  the  young  architects  of  England  in  pre- 


ORIEL  OF  HOUSE  IN  FIFTY-FIFTH  STREET. 
C.  C.  Haight,  Architect. 


20 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


ferring  the  refinements  of  a fixed  and  developed  archi- 
tecture to  the  rudenesses  of  a living  and  growing  archi- 
tecture. Because  they  did  not  see  their  way  at  once  to 
“supply  every  deficiency  and  symmetrize  every  dispro- 
portion,” they  did  not  leave  this  for  their  successors,  but 
abandoned  the  attempt  at  an  expression  of  the  things 
they  were  doing  for  the  elegant  expression  in  antique 
architecture  of  meanings  that  have  grown  meaningless 
to  modern  men. 

They  have  had  their  way  in  New  York  for  seven  or 
eight  years,  during  a period  unprecedented  in  building 
activity,  and  out  of  all  comparison  in  the  profusion 
with  which  money  has  been  lavished  upon  building  and 
decoration.  What  have  they  gained  for  architectural 
art?  They  have,  indeed,  subjected  many  miles  of  sand- 
stone to  the  refining  influence  of  egg-and-dart  mould- 
ings (the  designer  of  a house  in  Fifth  Avenue  has  so 
much  faith  in  the  efficacy  of  that  ornament  that  he  has 
belted  his  street  front  with  three  rows  of  it,  one  above 
the  other),  and  triglyphs  (faithfully  to  have  contem- 
plated which  softens  the  manners,  nor  suffers  to  be 
rude)  have  been  brought  within  the  reach  of  the  hum- 
blest in  the  decoration  of  tenement-houses.  They  have 
built  so  much  and  so  expensively  that  they  have  pro- 
duced in  minds — like  some  of  their  own — which  do  not 
reflect  much  upon  these  things  the  impression  that  if 
luxury  and  art  be  not  synonymous,  they  are  at  least 
inseparably  connected,  with  the  latter  in  the  capacity 
of  handmaiden.  But  will  any  educated  architect  assert 
that  the  characteristic  monuments  of  the  last  five  or 
six  years — greatly  superior  in  quantity,  and  superior  by 
a great  multiple  in  cost — are  equal  in  architectural  value 
to  the  work  of  the  decade  preceding?  Suppose  that 
Mr.  Norman  Shaw  had  not  bedevilled  the  weaker  of 
his  brethren,  and  that  this  unprecedented  building  ac- 


CONCERNING  QUEEN  ANNE 


2 i 


tivity  and  this  unparalleled  spending  of  money  that  have 
fallen  under  the  control  of  architects  had  been  directed 
along  the  lines  laid  down  by  the  Gothic  revivalists,  and 
had  extended,  consolidated,  and  refined  the  work  begun 

O 

and  carried  on  here  by  such  architects  as  Mr.  Upjohn, 
Mr.  Eidlitz,  Mr. 

Withers,  Mr.  Cady, 

Mr.  Potter,  and  Mr. 

Wight,  will  any  edu- 
cated architect  main- 
tain that  the  result 
of  such  a process 
would  not  have  been 
nobler  monuments 
than  any  to  which 
we  can  point  as 
characteristic  prod- 
ucts of  the  later 
movement  ? 

We  might  ask  Mr. 

Harney,  forexample, 
who  has  been  one 
of  the  noteworthy 
contributors  to  the 
works  of  both  peri- 
ods, whether  in  fall- 
ing to  “ grace  ” he 
has  not  fallen  from 
something  more  im- 
portant. One  can  readily  understand  that  Mr.  Harney,  in 
contemplating  the  effect  of  his  completed  work  in  the  re- 
spectable warehouse  at  the  corner  of  Bond  Street  and 
Broadway,  should  have  been  disappointed  in  the  effect 
of  much  of  the  detail  he  had  designed  for  his  building, 
should  have  found  some  of  it  rude,  some  of  it  dispropor- 


DOORWAY,  FIFTH  AVENUE,  BELOW  SEVENTY-FIFTH  STREET. 
R.  H.  Robertson,  Architect. 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


tionate  to  its  function  and  position,  and 
none  of  it  exquisite  in  modelling.  It 
is  also  intelligible  that  he  may  have 
been  dissatisfied  with  some  parts  even 
of  his  still  more  successful  house 
at  Fifth  Avenue  and  Fifty-seventh 
Street,  which,  always  a grate- 
ful object,  has  lately  acquired 
an  air  of  additional  distinction 
from  the  eager  architectural 
competition  which  has  set  in 
alongside  of  it,  and  the  results 
of  which  give  an  air  of  un- 
questionable animation — the 
animation  of  excited  contro- 
versy— to  Fifty-seventh  Street 
from  Fifth  to  Sixth  Avenue. 
This  dissatisfaction,  if  the 
architect  underwent  it,  was 
a wholesome  discontent  which 
we  should  have  expected  to 
see  allayed  by  more  thorough- 
ly studied  detail  in 
Mr.  Harney’s  succeed- 
ing work.  But  it 
seems  to  have  been  a 
morbid  sensitiveness 
to  the  defects  of  his 
work  which  led  Mr. 
Harney  to  abandon  al- 
together, and  in  de- 
spair, the  practice  of 
architectural  design, 
and,  when  he  had  another  commercial  building  to  do, 
to  erect  in  Wall  Street  an  entirely  ineffectual  structure, 


HOUSE  IN  FIFTY-SIXTH  STREET. 
Bruce  Price,  Architect. 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


of  which  the  architecture  that  one  carries  away  with  him 
consists  in  a crow-stepped  gable,  an  irrelevant  entablature 
applique  which  crosses  the  building  half-way  up,  and  win- 
dows covered  with  flat  arches,  the  key-stones  of  which 
are  “shored  up”  by  the  mullions ; and,  when  he  had 
another  city  house  to  do,  to  depute  the  design  of  it  to 
some  unknown  carpenter  who  died  before  he  was  born, 
and  to  reproduce  accurately  in  Madison  Avenue  a Van- 
dam  or  Charlton  Street  house  built  out  of  due  time, 
with  a familiar  “old  New  York”  doorway,  in  the  jambs 
of  which  quoins  intercept  sheaves  of  mouldings.  This 
confession  that  a carpenter  of  1825  was  a better-trained 
designer  than  an  educated  architect  of  1S80  is  very 
possibly  creditable  to  the  personal  modesty  of  the  latter ; 
but  Mr.  Harney’s  own  earlier  works  sufficiently  testify 
that  it  does  not  do  him  justice. 

Mr.  Cady,  one  of  the  most  important  and  distin- 
guished of  the  contributors  to  the  Gothic  revival  in 
New  York,  has  also  of  late  years  become  a convert  to 
the  new  movement,  and  seems  from  our  point  of  view 
to  have  thrown  himself  away  with  even  less  sufficient 
cause  than  that  which  impelled  Mr.  Harney  to  his  rash 
act.  For  we  have  distinctly  admitted  that  Mr.  Harney 
had  reason  to  be  dissatisfied  with  his  Gothic  detail, 
while  we  cannot  make  that  admission  in  behalf  of  Mr. 
Cady.  Mr.  Cady’s  newer  work  is  shown  in  a house  of 
red- brick  and  brown  sandstone,  which  he  contributed 
to  the  architectural  competition  just  noticed.  This  edi- 
fice shows  a desire  to  live  at  peace  in  the  midst  of  very 
quarrelsome  neighbors.  Mr.  Cady,  indeed,  could  scarce- 
ly design  a vulgar  and  vociferous  work  if  he  tried.  At 
any  rate,  he  has  never  tried,  and  does  not  in  the  least 
need  to  be  put  under  the  bonds  of  a style  in  order  to 
insure  his  keeping  the  peace.  One  wonders  what  Mr. 
Cady  believes  himself  to  have  gained  in  abandoning  the 


24 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


style  of  his  brilliant  Art  Building  in  Brooklyn  for  the 
style  of  his  not  very  noticeable  house  in  Fifty-seventh 
Street. 

Quietude  can,  no  doubt,  be  attained  in  Queen  Anne; 
but  it  can  also  be  attained,  by  architects  who  are  really 
in  quest  of  it,  in  other  styles  quite  as  well,  which  admit 
a much  wider  range  of  expression,  while  the  student  is 
forced  to  doubt  whether  by  means  of  the  meagre  reper- 
tory of  Queen  Anne  any  other  quality  than  quietude 
can  be  expressed.  Its  successes  in  domestic  architect- 
ure are  mainly  the  successes  of  unnoticeableness,  which 
is  really  the  character  not  only  of  the  dwellings  just 
mentioned,  but  of  a house  by  Mr.  Robertson  in  Fifth 
Avenue,  of  a house  by  Mr.  Haight  in  Fifty-fifth  Street, 
and  of  a house,  which  has  the  great  advantage  of  double 
the  usual  frontage,  by  Messrs.  McKim,  Mead,  & White, 
in  Madison  Avenue,  adjoining  Mr.  Harney’s  reproduc- 
tion; for  the  tall  red-brick  house  in  Thirty-fourth  Street 
by  these  latter  architects,  which  looks  less  like  a work 
of  architectural  art  than  a magnified  piece  of  furniture 
“with  the  Chippendale  feeling,”  can  scarcely  be  called 
successful,  while  the  house  they  designed  for  Mr.  Astor 
in  Fifth  Avenue,  a simply  and  quietly  treated  street 
front  in  brick  and  sandstone,  can  certainly  not  be  called 
Queen  Anne,  in  spite  of  the  three  rows  of  egg-and-dart 
moulding,  already  remarked,  which  crown  its  rock-faced 
basement.  The  highest  praise  to  which  these  typical 
Queen  Anne  houses  can  aspire,  in  spite  of  some  thor- 
oughly studied  detail,  such  as  the  treatment  of  the  oriel 
in  that  one  designed  by  Mr.  Haight,  is  that  they  look 
like  eligible  mansions  for  highly  respectable  families 
content  with  dwelling  in  the  decencies;  and  this  is  also 
the  highest  praise  that  can  be  bestowed  upon  their  pro- 
totypes of  the  Georgian  era.  We  can  repeat  the  admis- 
sion that  it  is  far  better  they  should  look  like  that  than 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


like  the  habitations  of  vulgarly  ostentatious  persons, 
without  thereby  admitting  that  the  prim  and  prosaic 
expression  of  re- 
spectability never  so 
eminent  can  be 
scored  as  a triumph 
in  domestic  archi- 
tecture. The  do- 
mestic architecture 
of  Venice,  or  Rou- 
en, or  Nuremberg 
has  something  more 
to  say  to  us  than 
that.  And  a touch 
of  such  spirit  and 
picturesqueness  as 
Mr.  Bruce  Price  has 
given  us  in  a brick 
house  in  Fifty-sixth 
Street  (p.  22),  or  as 
Mr.  Hunt  has  given 
us  not  only  in  the  elab- 
orately ornate  house 
of  Mr.  W.  K.  Van- 
derbilt, but  in  some 
dwellings  in  upper 
Madison  Avenue,  is 
more  to  be  desired 
than  a mere  omission 
to  outrage  decorum. 

Such  as  the  suc- 
cesses of  Oueen 
Anne  in  domestic 
architecture  are, they 
are  its  only  successes, 


HOUSES  IN  MADISON  AVENUE. 
R.  M.  Hunt,  Architect. 


26 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


although  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that  much  interesting  work 
has  been  clone  in  it,  if  not  strictly  of  it,  in  suburban  houses 
and  sea-side  cottages,  which  do  not  come  within  our  pres- 
ent scope.  A “ feature  ” suffices  for  the  architecture  of  a 
narrow  street  front,  and  a feature  may  be  compiled  out 
of  the  repertory  of  Oueen  Anne  by  a designer  who 
thinks  that  result  a reward  of  his  pains,  The  oriel, 
for  example,  in  effect  comprises  the  architecture  of  the 
house  just  mentioned  as  designed  by  Mr.  Haight.  But 
even  in  a house  which  is  only  a feature  the  classic  de- 
tail is  not  always  adjusted  without  a visible  incongruity 
to  the  constructions,  out  of  which  classic  detail  cannot 
spontaneously  grow  as  it  grew  out  of  classic  construc- 
tions. The  doorway,  for  example,  of  the  house  designed 
by  Mr.  Robertson,  which  is  virtually  repeated  in  the 
window  over  it,  is  a moulded  round  arch  standing  upon 
pilasters  of  its  own  width,  and  thus  apparently  making 
of  the  jamb  and  arch  a complete  and  detached  construc- 
tion. That  is  to  say,  the  pilasters  seem  to  carry  the 
arch.  The  architect  of  the  New  York  Post-office  has 
done  the  same  thing  in  a much  ruder  way.  But  the 
elegance  of  Mr.  Robertson’s  detail  cannot  rid  even  the 
spectator  who  does  not  stop  to  analyze  the  source  of 
the  feeling  of  an  uneasy  sensation  that  what  is  thus  ele- 
gantly expressed  is  not  the  fact.  An  arch  does,  in  fact, 
exercise  a lateral  as  well  as  a vertical  pressure ; and  if 
the  arch  and  its  vertical  supports  formed  a detached 
construction,  as  they  here  appear  to  do,  the  arch  would 
be  unstable.  Insensible  as  the  classical  Romans  were 
to  considerations  of  artistic  expression,  they  were  not 
so  insensible  as  this.  They  recognized  the  existence  of 
a lateral  pressure  by  marking  the  impost  of  the  arches 
with  a continuous  moulding,  thus  allying  the  arch  with 
its  lateral  abutment  as  well  as  with  its  vertical  support; 
and  here  the  architect  of  the  Post-office,  wiser,  or,  if 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


27 


thought  be  not  predicable  of  his  architecture,  more  fort- 
unate than  Mr.  Robertson,  has  been  content  to  imitate 
them.  . 

The  buildings  in  which  these  solecisms  appear,  we 
repeat,  are  the  successes  of  Queen  Anne.  For  struct- 
ures more  complicated  most  of  its  practitioners  have 
shrunk  from  invoking  it.  Messrs.  Peabody  and  Stearns, 
indeed,  took  the  ground,  when  they  designed  the  Union 
League  Club  House,  that  a “feature”  supplied  a suffi- 
cient idea  for  that  edifice ; and  that  a portico  of  four 
large  Roman  Corinthian  columns  in  front,  subdued  to 
an  equal  number  of  brick  pilasters  on  the  side,  would 
meet  the  architectural  requirements  of  the  case,  if  they 
let  their  consciousness  play  freely  over  the  remaining 
surfaces  without  reference  to  this  central  thought.  But 
the  result  has  scarcely  justified  this  belief,  and  the  spec- 
tator finds  that  the  building,  in  spite  of  the  unifying 
influence  of  a large  and  simple  roof,  in  addition  to  the 
feature  in  question,  does  not  make  a total  impression, 
but  is  scattering  and  confused ; while  its  parts,  taken 
singly,  are  feeble  in  spite  of  their  extravagant  scale. 
This,  indeed,  is  not  even  a sacrifice  to  the  conven- 
tions, but  a specimen  of  what  can  be  achieved  in 
a style  of  gentle  dulness  gone  rampant.  If  tame 
Oueen  Anne  is  a somewhat  ineffectual  thing,  what 
shall  be  said  of  wild  Queen  Anne?  There  is  nothing 
wild  about  two  other  public  buildings  in  which  archi- 
tects have  ventured  upon  Queen  Anne — one  a hospital, 
in  Park  Avenue,  by  Mr.  Haight,  and  one  an  “institu- 
tion” of  some  other  kind,  in  Lexington  Avenue,  by  Mr. 
Fernbach.  Both  of  these,  indeed,  are  tame,  and  what- 
ever the  differences  of  detail  may  be,  both  have  much 
the  same  expression,  so  that  one  carries  away  from 
either,  as  from  one  of  the  commonplace  faces  which 
we  are  always  confounding,  an  impression  which  may 


28 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


be  that  of  the  other— in  either  case  of  a centre  with 
projecting  wings  separately  roofed,  and  the  whole  wall 
overlaid  with  a shallow  trellis  of  brick-work,  too  shallow 
to  be  serviceable  as  buttresses,  and  serviceable  only  as 
the  badge  of  the  alleged  “style.”  It  seems  hard  upon 
an  owner  that  he  should  be  required  to  pay  money  for 
rectangular  applications  of  brick  which  can  scarcely 
strengthen  his  building  appreciably,  and  can  hardly  be 
held  to  beautify  it,  by  way  merely  of  labelling  it,  “ This 
is  Queen  Anne.”  And  this  resemblance,  be  it  noted, 
which  is  not  so  much  a specific  resemblance  as  the  ex- 
pression of  an  amiable  characterlessness  common  to 
both,  is  not  all  to  be  imputed  to  the  architects,  except 
upon  the  ground  of  their  choice  of  a style.  The  works 
of  both  of  them  have  character,  and  not  at  all  the  same 
character,  when  they  are  working  in  a style  which  is  a 
real  form-language  in  which  meanings  can  be  expressed, 
and  not  a mere  little  phrase-book  containing  elegant 
extracts  wherewith  to  garnish  aimless  discourse.  Mr. 
Fernbach,*  as  is  testified  by  such  works  as  the  “ Staats- 
Zeitumr”  building  and  the  German  Savings-Bank  in  New 
York,  and  the  building  of  the  Mutual  Insurance  Com- 
pany in  Philadelphia,  is  one  of  the  most  accomplished 
practitioners  in  this  country  of  academic  Renaissance. 
Mr.  Haight,  as  we  shall  presently  see  more  at  large,  is 
a highly  accomplished  designer  in  Gothic.  It  is  not 
their  fault  if  Queen  Anne,  when  spread  over  an  exten- 
sive faqade,  spreads  thin. 

Mr.  Robertson  is  the  only  architect  who  has  had  the 
temerity  to  attempt  a Queen  Anne  church,  and  the 
success  of  his  essay  is  not  such  as  to  invite  imitation. 
The  essay  itself  is  a little  church  in  Madison  Avenue, 
with  not  much  of  Queen  Anne  in  the  main  walls,  which 


Died  1883. 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


29 


are  of  a rugged  rusticity,  with  the  needful  openings  left 
square-headed  and  unmodelled ; but  these  walls  are 
crowned  with  a clere-story  faced  with  yellow  shingles, 
under  a broad  gable,  and  its  openings  united  under  a 
thin  ogee  canopy  of  painted  pine.  There  is  here  and 
there  a little  classic  detail,  which,  if  it  pleases  the  de- 
signer, certainly  hurts  nobody;  but  it  is  the  interior  that 
is  dedicated  to  Queen  Anne.  Here  one  may  see  what 
the  German  critics  call  the  “ playful  use  ” of  forms 
devised  for  one  construction  and  one  material  in  an- 
other material  and  with  no  visible  construction  ; and  the 
result  of  this  pleasantry  is  what  a German  professor, 
celebrated  in  recent  fiction,  describes  as  “ an  important 
joke.”  In  the  main  features  of  this  interior,  however, 
the  treatment  passes  a joke,  for  the  mahogany  nave 
arches,  with  their  little  protruding  key-woods,  and  their 
supporting  posts  incased  in  boxed  pedestals,  are  actually 
doing  the  work  of  carrying  the  clere-story — unless,  in- 
deed, there  is  a concealed  system  of  iron-work — although 
their  function  is  so  far  sacrificed  to  their  form  that  they 
are  doing  the  work  in  the  most  ungainly  and  ineffective 
fashion.  Above  this,  as  the  repertory  of  Queen  Anne 
contains  no  forms  that  can  be  even  tortured  into  the 
construction  of  an  open  ceiling,  the  architect  has  omit- 
ted design  altogether,  and  left  his  ceiling  a mere  loft, 
sheathed  underneath  with  yellow  pine.  Elsewhere,  as 
in  the  fittings  of  the  chancel,  the  use  of  forms  is  en- 
tirely playful,  so  that  the  interior  of  the  church  seems 
to  be  a collection  of  pleasantries.  In  a dining-room, 
for  example,  we  should  pronounce  them  good  jokes,  but 
really  in  a church  a discussion  of  their  merit  as  jokes 
seems  to  be  ruled  out  by  the  previous  question  as  to 
the  admissibility  in  the  sacred  edifice  of  levity  even  of 
the  highest  order.  It  is  perhaps  fortunate  for  the  ap- 
pliers  of  Queen  Anne  to  ecclesiastical  uses,  and  indeed 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


30 

for  the  designers  of  “cozy”  churches  in  general,  that 
there  is  no  official  censorship  of  church  architecture  as 
there  is  of  church  music,  and  that  no  rubric  makes  it 
the  duty  of  every  minister,  with  such  assistance  as  he 
can  obtain  from  persons  skilled  in  architecture,  to  sup- 
press all  light  and  unseemly  architecture  by  which  vain 
and  ungodly  persons  profane  the  service  of  the  sanctu- 
ary. We  may  ask  Mr.  Robertson,  in  the  spirit  in  which 
we  have  been  asking  other  architects,  what  he  has 
gained  by  abandoning  such  an  effort  as  he  made  some 
ten  years  before  in  the  Phillips  Memorial  Church  to 
develop  a composition  out  of  his  subject  in  favor  of 
these  scraps  of  quotations,  and  of  quotations  neither 
fresh  nor  very  pregnant ! He  might  answer  that  the 
church  in  which  we  admire  at  least  the  effort  was  a 
somewhat  untamed  and  obstreperous  fabric,  and  that 
the  present  edifice  is  much  more  chastened  and  sub- 
dued. It  is  tame,  no  doubt,  and  Mr.  Robertson’s  talent, 
when  he  works  in  Queen  Anne,  is  subdued— 

“subdued 

To  what  it  works  in,  like  the  dyer’s  hand 

but,  upon  the  whole,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  archi- 
tect, comparing  the  earlier  with  the  later  work,  could 
fail  to  feel  that  the  attempt  to  express  something,  how- 
ever crude  and  so  far  unsuccessful  the  attempt  might 
have  been,  was  a more  manly  and  artistic  employment 
than  this  elegant  trifling,  in  which  the  highest  attain- 
able success  has  an  element  of  puerility.  In  truth,  it  is 
gratifying  to  remark  that  the  argument  by  which  we 
have  supposed  the  architect  to  have  solaced  himself  for 
the  result  of  his  ecclesiastical  labors  in  Queen  Anne 
does  not  seem  to  have  convinced  himself,  and  that  a 
later  work  still,  a sandstone  church  farther  down  the 
same  avenue,  is  a much  more  serious  piece  of  design, 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


31 


being  an  attempt  to  develop  the  architecture  out  of 
the  structure  itself.  It  would  be  especially  unjust  to 
misapply  to  Mr.  Robertson’s  Queen  Anne  church  the 
saying  that  the  style  is  the  man,  for  the  church  last 
mentioned  shows  that  Mr.  Robertson  is  a man  of  tal- 
ents, when  he  gives  his  talents  a chance. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  speaking  of  the  respectable 
and  conservative  element  in  the  new  departure,  of  the 
Extreme  Right,  so  to  speak,  and  generally  of  works 
which  were  seriously  designed,  and  so  are  entitled  to 
be  seriously  considered.  It  is  not  so  pleasant  to  turn 
to  the  Extreme  Left,  a frantic  and  vociferous  mob,  who 
welcome  the  “ new  departure  ” as  the  disestablishment 
of  all  standards,  whether  of  authority  or  of  reason,  and 
as  an  emancipation  from  all  restraints,  even  those  of 
public  decency,  and  who  avail  themselves  of  the  re- 
mission of  them  from  academic  restraints  to  those 
imposed  by  their  own  sense  of  propriety  by  promptly 
showing  that  they  haven't  any.  The  tame  decorum  of 
one  phase  of  the  new  departure  is  supplemented  by  the 
violent  indecorum  of  another.  Sometimes  the  same 
designers  march  now  with  one  wing  and  now  with  the 
other  of  the  divergent  host.  Messrs.  Me  Kim,  Mead, 
& White,  for  example,  have  consoled  themselves  for 
what  now  almost  seems  to  have  been  the  enforced  se- 
dateness of  the  houses  we  have  noticed,  by  a mad  orgy 
of  bad  architecture  in  East  Fifty- fifth  Street.  The 
scene  of  this  excess  almost  immediately  adjoins  the  dig- 
nified and  respectable  dwelling  designed  by  Mr.  Haight, 
and  almost  frights  that  edifice  from  its  propriety,  and 
the  designers  seem  to  have  been  led  into  it  by  the  bale- 
ful example  of  older  persons  who  ought  to  have  known 
better,  and  who  committed  the  maddest  freaks  in  the 
artistic  quarter  of  the  London  suburb  of  Chelsea  while 
in  a condition  of  total  irresponsibility  alike  to  any  con- 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


victions  and  to  any  conventions  of  architectural  art. 
The  present  indecorum  has  been  committed  in  the  de- 
sign of  two  dwellings  which  consist  of  a ferociously 
rugged  basement  and  parapeted  cornice  in  granite,  with 
two  or  three  irregularly  disposed  tin  dormers  emerging 
above,  and  with  a flat  and  shallow  screen  of  brick  wall 
inserted  between  them,  as  between  the  upper  and  the 
nether  millstone,  and  having  its  thinness  emphasized  at 
all  the  angles  by  shallow  incisions  forming  a series  of 
brick  weather-strips,  as  it  were,  a square  reticulation 
of  which  traverses  the  plane  surfaces  also.  It  is  quite 
conceivable  that  rugged  simplicity  may  have  suggested 
itself  to  a designer  as  a desirable  character  for  a city 
house,  but  it  seems  scarcely  possible  that  squareness 
and  flatness  and  thinness  should  have  appeared  desir- 
able, and  quite  impossible  that  beauty  should  have 
seemed  to  dwell  in  a building  the  top  and  bottom  of 
which  were  characterized  by  rugged  simplicity,  and  the 
middle  by  squareness  and  flatness  and  thinness.  The 
details,  whether  in  brick  or  granite  or  tin,  are  as  pre- 
posterous as  the  conception  of  a building  with  its  parts 
thus  swearing  at  each  other.  The  round-headed  door- 
way is  surmounted  with  the  imitation  in  granite  of  a 
metal  flap  secured  to  the  rest  of  the  block  from  which 
it  is  cut  by  similitudes  in  granite  of  iron  bolt-heads. 
In  the  basement  respectable  blocks  of  granite  are  sub- 
jected to  the  indignity  of  being  decorated  with  stream- 
ing ribbons  in  low-relief.  In  truth,  the  only  detail  of 
the  work  which  one  can  contemplate  even  with  toler- 
ance is  a grill  in  the  basement  doorway  which  is  the 
simplest  possible  trellis  of  iron  rods. 

Indecorous  and  incoherent  as  this  edifice  unquestion- 
ably is,  it  has  yet  the  air  of  a gentleman  taking  his 
pleasure,  albeit  in  a perverse  and  vicious  fashion,  when 
compared,  for  example,  with  the  dwellings  in  red  brick 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


33 


and  brown  stone  at  the  corner  of  Fifth  Avenue  and 
Sixty-seventh  Street.  In  these  there  is  no  composition 
whatever,  and  the  effect  is  so  scattering,  and  the  whole 
is  so  fortuitous  an  aggregation  of  unrelated  parts,  that 


DOORWAY  AT  FIFTH  AVENUE  AND  SIXTY-SEVENTH  STREET. 


it  is  impossible  to  describe  the  houses  or  to  remember 
them  when  one’s  back  is  turned.  Their  fragments  only 
recur  to  memory,  as  the  blurred  images  of  a hideous 
dream.  So  one  recalls  the  Batavian  grace  of  the  bul- 
bous gables ; the  oriel-windows,  so  set  as  to  seem  in  im- 

5 


34 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


minent  danger  of  toppling  out;  the  egg-and-dart  mould- 
ing, niggled  up  and  down  jambs  of  brick-work  connected 
by  flat  openings  with  protruding  key-stones;  the  whip- 
lashes cut  in  sandstone  blocks;  the  decorative  detail 
fished  from  the  slums  of  the  Rococo.  These  are  not 
subjects  for  architectural  criticism ; they  call  for  the 
intervention  of  an  architectural  police.  They  are  cases 
of  disorderly  conduct  done  in  brick  and  brown  stone. 
I fazardous  as  the  superlative  degree  generally  is,  it  is 
not  much  of  a hazard  to  say  that  they  are  the  most 
thoroughly  discreditable  buildings  ever  erected  in  New 
York,  and  it  is  to  be  noted  that  they  are  thoroughly 
characteristic  of  the  period.  Such  a nightmare  might, 
perhaps,  have  entered  the  brain  of  some  speculative 
builder  during  the  wildest  vulgarity  of  the  brown-stone 
period,  but  he  would  not  have  had  the  effrontery  to 
build  it,  being  deterred  by  the  consideration  that  no- 
body would  face  public  ridicule  by  consenting  to  live 
in  it.  Some  speculator  is,  however,  convinced  that 
there  is  now  a market  for  a house  which  stands  upon 
the  street  corner,  and  screeches  for  people  to  come  and 
look  at  it,  when  there  is  nothing  in  it  worth  looking  at; 
and  we  must  take  shame  to  ourselves  from  the  reflec- 
tion that  the  speculator  may  be  right  in  counting  upon 
this  extreme  vulgarization  of  the  public  taste,  and  that, 
at  any  rate,  there  is  no  police  to  prevent  the  emission 
of  the  screech  upon  the  public  highway. 

This  is  the  result  of  a demand  for  “something  new” 
upon  a mind  incapable  of  producing  anything  good. 
The  screech  is  the  utterance  of  the  Sweet  Singer  of 
Michigan,  exhorted  not  to  mind  about  grammar,  but 
“ to  fix  her  verses  to  the  gauge  of  the  round  globe.” 
It  is  an  extreme  instance,  to  be  sure ; but  there  are 
others  only  less  discreditable,  and  only  to  be  dealt  with 
in  the  way  of  what  is  called  “slashing”  criticism,  which 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


35 


probably  never  yet  served  any  more  important  purpose 
than  to  ease  the  critic’s  mind.  It  is  enough  to  indicate 
these  things,  and  to  point  out  that  they  are  all  produced 


by  the  strain  in  the  minds  of  incompetent  designers 
after  originality  and  aboriginal ity  — a purpose  essen- 
tially vulgar,  which  would  vitiate  the  work  even  of  a 
competent  designer  wherever  it  could  be  detected.  For 
although  the  pursuit  of  excellence  is  sure  to  result  in 
novelty,  the  pursuit  of  novelty  is  sure  not  to  result  in 
excellence.  The  extreme  instance  we  have  cited  is  still 


36 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


an  instance  of  a tendency  to  which  all  the  younger 
generation  of  architects,  of  whom  so  much  was  hoped, 
and  of  whom,  considering  their  opportunities,  so  little 
of  value  has  come,  have  more  or  less  yielded — the  ten- 
dency to  take  themselves  too  seriously  and  their  art  not 
seriously  enough,  and  to  imagine  that  anything  that 
occurs  to  them  is  for  that  reason  good  enough  to  build, 
without  asking  it  any  questions.  Such  caricatures  of 
architecture  as  these  houses  would  not  occur  to  the 
mind  of  an  educated  architect ; but  when  all  restraints, 
rational  and  academic,  are  removed,  even  educated  archi- 
tects, as  we  have  seen,  will  not  always  take  the  trouble 
to  analyze  their  conceptions  before  embodying  them  in 
durable  brick  and  stone.  It  is  from  this  that  it  comes 
that,  as  we  said  awhile  ago,  the  characteristic  works  of 
the  present  period  are  distinctly  inferior  to  the  charac- 
teristic works  of  the  preceding  period.  It  is  not  that 
thoroughly  good  buildings  have  not  been  done  within 
the  latter  period,  but  that  they  are  not  characteristic  of 
the  period.  The  buildings  which  appear  to  have  been 
done  by  architects,  and  yet  fail  to  stand  the  tests  either 
of  sense  or  of  style,  date  themselves  infallibly  as  having 
been  done  since  1S76.  One  must  resort  to  external 
evidence  to  ascertain  whether  the  buildings  that  are 
honorable  monuments  to  their  architects  were  done 
before  or  since  Mr.  Norman  Shaw  did  all  this  mischief. 

First  among  these,  one  has  little  hesitation  in  placing 
the  new  buildings  designed  by  Mr.  Haight  for  Colum- 
bia College.  Mr.  Haight  has  not  here  been  in  pursuit 
of  novelty,  but  has  been  content  with  conforming  his 
structure  to  its  function,  and  modelling  the  masses  thus 
arrived  at  so  as  to  heighten  their  inherent  expression. 
And  although  he  has  kept  within  the  limits  of  histori- 
cal English  Gothic  in  doing  this,  the  result  of  the  proc- 
ess is  an  individual  building  with  a characteristic  ex- 


CONCERNING  QUEEN  ANNE 


37 


pression  of  its  own,  the  most  successful  piece  of  Gothic 
design  that  has  been  done  in  New  York  since  Mr. 
Withers  designed  the  Jefferson  Market  Court-house. 
In  Queen  Anne,  as  we  saw,  Mr.  Haight’s  work  was 
not  very  distinguish- 
able from  the  work  of 
a very  different  archi- 
tect. With  a vocab- 
ulary limited  to  fifty 
words,  not  much  can  be 
expressed.  But  when 
he  permits  himself  the 
use  of  language,  it  is 
seen  that  Mr.  Haight 
can  express  thoughts. 

In  composition  and  in 
detail  these  buildings 
are  thoroughly  studied 
and  thoroughly  effec- 
tive. In  the  earlier,  a 
street  front  of  a whole 
block  on  Madison  Ave- 
nue, the  designer  has 
resisted  the  temptation 
to  diversify  his  build- 
ing into  unrest,  but  has 
built  a wall  of  three 
stories  in  red  brick 
and  light  sandstone,  the 
broad  and  quiet  aspect 
of  which  is  enhanced 
by  the  grouping  of  the 
openings,  and  not  disturbed  by  the  chimney-stacks  and 
the  oriel  and  the  turret  which  animate  the  composition. 
The  later  building,  of  the  same  materials,  has  been  built 


FROM  GOVERNOR  TILDEN  S HOUSE. 
Calvert  Vaux,  Architect. 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


38 

for  the  library  of  the  college,  and  the  large  hall  which  con- 
tains this  is  in  effect  the  building.  This  is  treated  with 
equal  skill,  and  to  the  same  result  of  cloistral  repose,  of 
harmony  and  dignity  and  grace.  These  vigorous  and  re- 
fined works  show,  if  the  showing  were  needed,  except  by 
the  architects  of  the  new  departure,  that  vigor  does  not 
necessarily  involve  bowlders,  nor  refinement  microscopic 
mouldings,  and  that  these  short-cuts  to  architectural  ef- 
fect are  rather  sorry  and  shabby  substitutes  for  faithful 
and  skilful  design.  That  these  works  of  Mr.  Haight’s 
are  grammatically  “correct”  Gothic  is  not,  to  our  mind, 
either  a merit  or  a defect.  But  it  shows  how  wide  is 
the  range  of  expression  possible  in  the  architecture  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  of  its  pliability  to  modern  uses, 
that  without  a departure  from  precedent  the  needs  of 
an  American  college  in  the  nineteenth  century  can  be 
completely  answered  in  that  architecture ; for  there  is 
no  innovation  in  Mr.  Haight’s  work,  unless  we  include 
the  iron  roof,  which  is  partly  visible  from  the  floor  of 
the  hall.  There  are  one  or  two  “survivals”  of  forms 
which  have  lost  their  functions,  as  the  unpierced  pin- 
nacled turrets  at  the  angles  of  the  library  building  and 
the  crenellated  parapet  of  the  porch  in  the  quadrangle. 
But,  upon  the  whole,  the  result  upon  which  the  college 
and  its  architect  are  to  be  congratulated  has  been  at- 
tained by  following  the  advice  of  the  sculptor  who  in- 
formed his  pupil  that  the  art  was  not  difficult:  “You 
simply  take  a piece  of  marble  and  leave  out  what  you 
don’t  want.”  Mr.  Haight  has  taken  what  he  wanted 
in  Gothic  architecture  for  the  uses  of  Columbia  Col- 
lege, and  with  the  trivial  exceptions  we  have  noted  has 
left  out  the  rest.  And  what  is  true  of  this  work  is 
equally  true  of  an  unpretending  and  picturesque  piece 
of  late  Gothic,  erected  from  Mr.  Haight’s  designs  for 
St.  Thomas’s  School,  in  East  Fifty-ninth  Street. 


ORIEL  IN 


w.  k.  Vanderbilt’s  house,  fifty-second  street. 


R.  M.  Hunt,  Architect. 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


41 


Another  interesting  piece  of  Gothic  work,  though 
this  time  of  distinctly  Victorian  Gothic,  is  the  house 
designed  by  Mr.  Vaux  for  Governor  Tilden.  The  in- 
terest of  this,  however,  is  rather  in  the  detail  of  form 
and  color  than  in  general  composition,  since  the  build- 
ing is  architecturally  only  a street  front,  and  since  the 
slightness  of  the  projections  and  the  lack  of  visible  and 
emphasized  depth  in  the  wall  itself  give  it  the  appear- 
ance rather  of  a screen  than  of  one  face  of  a building, 
and  the  small  gables  which  surmount  it  too  evidently 
exist  for  the  sole  purpose  of  animating  the  sky-line. 
But  the  color  treatment  of  this  front  is  admirable,  and 
recalls  the  best  work  of  the  most  successful  colorist  in 
architecture  whom  we  have  ever  had  in  New  York — 
Mr.  Wrey  Mould.  It  is  characteristic  that  interesting 
treatment  of  color,  like  every  other  properly  architect- 
ural development,  has  been  stopped  short  by  the  new 
“ movement.”  An  unusually  large  variety  of  colors, 
and  those  of  the  most  positive  tints  that  natural  stones 
supply,  has  here  been  employed  and  harmonized ; and, 
what  is  even  rarer,  they  have  all  been  used  with  archi- 
tectural propriety  to  accentuate  the  construction  and  to 
heighten  its  effect.  An  ingenious  and  novel  use  of 
dark  granite,  which  when  polished  is  almost  black,  and 
which  is  employed  in  narrow  bands  precisely  where  it 
is  wanted,  deserves  particular  remark.  The  decorative 
carving  attracts  attention  chiefly  by  its  profusion,  and 
by  the  exquisite  crispness  and  delicacy  of  its  execution. 
In  both  these  respects  the  only  parallel  to  it  is  in  the 
house  of  Mr.  W.  K.  Vanderbilt,  for,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  carving  upon  the  houses  of  Mr.  W.  H.  Vanderbilt 
does  not  count.  That  this  carving  counts  so  fully  is 
the  result  of  the  skill  of  the  architect  in  fixing  its  place 
and  adjusting  its  scale  so  that  it  everywhere  assists  the 
architecture,  and  is  better  in  its  place  than  it  would  be 
in  another  place. 

6 


42 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


These  things  are  equally  true  of  the  equally  profuse 
carving  in  the  house  designed  by  Mr.  Hunt  for  Mr.  W. 
K.  Vanderbilt;  but  this,  although  in  a monochrome  of 
gray  limestone,  would  have  a high  architectural  interest 
without  the  least  decoration  by  force  of  design  alone. 
The  decorative  detail  is  scarcely  so  well  adjusted  to 
the  building  in  scale  as  that  in  the  house  just  men- 
tioned, or  in  the  house  designed  for  Mr.  Cornelius 
Vanderbilt  by  Mr.  Post,  being  partly  lost  by  its  minute- 


REAR  OF  ROOF,  HOUSE  OF  CORNELIUS  VANDERBILT,  FIFTH  AVENUE. 
George  B.  Post,  Architect. 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


43 


ness,  but  it  has  the  same  merit  of  being  in  the  right 
place,  and  designed  for  its  place,  and  is  cut  with  the 
same  perfection.  In  a more  recent  work  of  Mr. 
Hunt’s,  the  Guernsey  Building,  in  lower  Broadway — 
a street  front  in  distinctly  modern  Gothic — there  is 
assuredly  no  error  in  scale  on  the  side  of  minute- 
ness ; but  the  treatment,  in  mass  and  in  detail,  is 
marked  by  great  vigor  and  animation,  and  the  archi- 
tecture of  the  building  is  an  emphatic  expression  of  its 
structure. 

Another  commercial  building,  at  the  corner  of  Broad- 
way and  Wall  Street,  is  by  the  architects  of  the  Union 
League  Club,  and  seems  to  have  been  designed  under 
the  pressure  of  a recent  discovery  that  that  building 
would  not  do.  There  is  no  doubt  about  the  discovery ; 
it  is  only  a pity  that  it  should  not  have  been  made  from 
the  drawings  before  they  were  translated  into  masonry. 
Clear,  however,  as  the  architects  were  on  this  point,  they 
were  not  so  clear  when  they  began  the  United  Bank 
Building  what  would  do,  and  the  first  two  stories  look 
like  a series  of  tentative  experiments  to  find  out.  They 
were  proving  all  things,  perhaps,  with  the  intention  of 
holding  fast  that  which  was  good.  The  practice  of 
projecting  bowlders,  especially  in  soft  sandstone,  has 
already  been  mentioned  as  a somewhat  slovenly  sub- 
stitute for  the  expression  of  vigor  by  modelling.  Bowl- 
ders are  projected  from  the  piers  of  this  basement  in 
the  most  ferocious  and  blood-curdling  manner — so  fero- 
cious, indeed,  that  the  architects  repented  them  of  their 
bullying  behavior.  It  is  like  the  fear  that  came  upon 
Snug  the  joiner,  of  the  consequences  that  would  ensue 
if  ladies  took  him  for  the  king  of  beasts:  “Another 
prologue  must  tell  he  is  not  a lion.”  And  so  the  archi- 
tects seem  to  have  taken  the  counsel  of  Nick  Bottom: 
“ Half  his  face  must  be  seen  through  the  lion’s  neck  ; 


44  AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 

and  he  himself  must  speak  through,  saying  thus,  or  to 
the  same  defect — Ladies,  or  fair  ladies,  1 would  wish 
you,  or,  I would  request  you,  or,  I would  entreat  you, 


not  to  fear,  not  to  tremble:  my  life  for  yours.  If  you 
think  I come  hither  as  a lion,  it  were  pity  of  my  life. 
No,  I am  no  such  thing:  I am  a man  as  other  men  are: 


DOORWAY  OF  GUERNSEY  BUILDING,  BROADWAY. 
R.  M.  Hunt,  Architect. 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


45 


and  there,  indeed,  let  him  name  his  name ; and  tell 
them  plainly  he  is  Snug  the  joiner” — that  is  to  say, 
Messrs.  Peabody  and  Stearns,  architects.  The  “ other 
prologue,”  which  is  calculated  to  reassure  the  most 
timid,  is  the  treatment  of  the  first  floor,  where  a dis- 
claimer of  any  offensive  intention  is  made  in  the  in- 
sertion between  the  openings  of  pairs  of  banded  pilas- 
ters, between  the  capitals  of  which  is  inserted  the  novel 
and  pleasing  ornament  of  a key-stone.  In  order  to 
make  sure  that  they  are  not  strong  enough  to  do  any 
harm,  they  are  not  only  designed  with  much  feebleness, 
but  they  are  projected  from  the  face  of  the  wall  they 
might  otherwise  be  imagined  to  strengthen,  and  set 
upon  brackets.  Between  these  Renaissance  pilasters 
are  Romanesque  entrance  arches,  in  which  there  is  a 
return  to  truculence  of  demeanor;  but  these  are  seen 
to  be  not  entrances  at  all,  but  only  innocent  windows 
of  bank  parlors,  and  the  real  entrances  under  them,  cov- 
ered with  trefoiled  gablets  in  cast  iron,  are  obviously 
harmless.  It  is  quite  fair  to  say  that  up  to  the  top  of 
the  first  story  there  is  no  design  in  the  building,  noth- 
ing that  betrays  any  evidence  of  a general  intention. 
But  having  built  thus  far  in  futile  search  of  a motive 
and  of  a style,  they  came  upon  both,  and  built  over  this 
aimless  and  restless  collection  of  inconsistent  details  a 
purposeful,  peaceable,  and  consistent  brick  building,  a 
series  of  powerful  piers  connected  by  and  sustaining 
powerful  arches,  defined  by  a light  label  moulding,  and 
enriched  at  the  springing  with  a well-designed  belt  of 
foliage.  It  seems  incredible  that  the  authors  of  this 
respectable  building  should  be  also  the  authors  of  the 
basement  on  which  it  stands.  At  the  angle  is  the  in- 
genious device  of  a griffin  “ displayed,”  and  with  one 
wing  folded  back  against  either  wall,  to  carry  the  metal 
socket  of  the  flag-staff.  This  feature  in  all  its  details 


46 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


is  designed  with 
great  spirit  and  pic- 
turesqueness. But 
the  architectural 
impulse  fails  in  the 
attic  story,  which 
should  obviously  be 
here  the  richest 
part  of  the  build- 
ing, and  which  is 
the  baldest,  being 
only  a series  of  rec- 
tangular holes, 
without  either 
modelling  or  dec- 
oration, and  with- 
out relation  in  their 
grouping  to  the 
openings  immedi- 
ately under  them. 

By  far  the  most 
successful,  how- 
ever, of  all  the  re- 
cent commercial 
buildings  is  the 
Post  Building,  de- 
signed by  Mr.  Post, 
and  executed,  above 
the  blue-stone  base- 
ment, in  yellow 
brick  and  yellow  terra-cotta.  The  site  is  an  irregular 
tetragon  at  the  intersection  of  three  streets,  and  the 
court,  made  necessary  by  the  depth  of  the  plot,  in- 
stead of  being  a well  sunk  in  the  middle  of  the  build- 
ing, is  made  a recess  in  one  of  the  long  sides.  This 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


47 


arrangement  is  not  only  practically  convenient,  but,  like 
every  arrangement  obviously  dictated  by  practical  con- 
venience, is  capable  of  becoming  architecturally  effec- 
tive, and  here  becomes  so.  The  openings  are  admirably 
well  grouped  between  the  powerful  piers,  and,  what  is 
a rare  attainment  in  “ elevator  architecture,”  there  is 
abundant  variety  in  their  treatment,  without  the  look 
of  restlessness  and  caprice  which  generally  attends  an 
effort  for  variety  in  a many-storied  building.  The  de- 
tail enhances  the  effect  of  this  disposition.  It  is  well 
adjusted  to  its  function  and  position,  nowhere  excessive 
in  quantity  or  in  scale,  and  nowhere  meagre,  and  it  is 
in  itself  rich  and  re- 
fined. It  is  designed 
in  “free  Renais- 
sance,” that  is  to  say, 
the  designer  has  un- 
dertaken to  model 
the  building  faith- 
fully, according  to  its 
plan  and  construc- 
tion, in  Renaissance 
architecture,  leav- 
ing out  all  that  he 
does  not  want.  Mr. 

H aight,  as  we  saw, 
was  able  to  achieve 
that  result  without 
transcending  the 
lines  of  academic 
Gothic.  Mr.  Post  has 
put  his  academic 
Renaissance  into  the 
alembic  of  analysis, 
and  where  the  analy- 


“ POST  ” BUILDING. 
George  13.  Post,  Architect. 


43 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


sis  has  been  complete  his  Renaissance  architecture 
has  volatilized  and  disappeared.  We  are  very  sure 
that  he  had  no  real  use  for  the  imitations  in  terra- 
cotta of  protruding  key-stones,  for  example,  and  these 
are  almost  the  only  badges  left  his  building  of  the 
style  with  which  he  started,  except  the  capitals  of 
the  pilasters,  and  the  Ionic  capitals  of  the  very  pretty 
shafted  arcade  which  forms  the  attic.  But  for  these 
comparatively  trivial  incidents  of  his  work,  Mr.  Post’s 
free  Renaissance  would  have  to  be  classified  as  Gothic, 
if  it  were  really  necessary  to  classify  it  at  all,  except  as 
good  architecture.  Mr.  Post,  in  fact,  has  done  on  his 
own  account  what  the  Romanesque  builders  did.  They, 
too,  were  doing  “ free  classic.”  They  began  with  classi- 
cal Roman  architecture,  and,  steadily  leaving  out  what 
they  did  not  want,  they  arrived  at  Westminster  and 
Amiens  and  Cologne. 

It  is  strange  to  see  so  thoroughly  studied  a perform- 
ance as  this  succeeded  by  so  thoroughly  unstudied  a 
performance  as  the  Mills  Building,  by  the  same  archi- 
tect. But  possibly  ten-story  buildings,  which  must  be 
built  in  a year,  will  not  wait  for  architects  to  mature 
designs  which  would  make  the  buildings  of  interest  to 
students  of  architecture  as  well  as  to  investors.  What- 
ever the  cause  may  be,  the  result  is  unfortunate  ; for 
after  the  grandiose  and  somewhat  swaggering  Roman 
gateway,  and  the  portcullis  which  it  encloses,  have  been 
taken  out,  the  rest  of  the  Mills  Building  may  safely  be 
thrown  away.  The  portcullis  is  really  an  interesting 
piece  of  iron-work  both  in  design  and  in  workmanship, 
although  in  both  it  is  distinctly  inferior  to  such  a piece 
of  work  as  the  nondescript  beast  in  cast  iron  that  per- 
forms the  humble  office  of  holding  a sign  in  Cedar 
Street,  and  that  might  have  been  wrought  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  so  grotesque,  so  skilful,  so  charged 


CONCERNING  QUEEN  ANNE  49 

with  the  spirit  of  artistic  and  enjoyed  handicraft  it  is. 
[See  initial  letter.] 

So  the  new  departure  is  still  but  a departure,  and  it 
seems  time  that  such  of  the  victims  of  it  as  are  artists 
who  take  serious  views  of  their  art  should  ask  them- 
selves why  they  continue  to  work  in  a style  which  has 
never  produced  a monument,  and  in  which  it  is  impos- 


GATEWAY  OF  MILLS  BUILDING. 
George  B.  Post,  Architect. 


50 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


sible  to  discern  any  element  of  progress.  In  doing 
Queen  Anne,  have  they  done  anything  but  follow  a 
fashion  set,  as  fashions  in  millinery  and  tailoring  are 
set,  by  mere  caprice?  A professional  journal  has  indeed 
declared  that  “ architecture  is  very  much  a matter  of 
fashion,”  and  architects  who  take  this  view  of  their 
calling  will  of  course  build  in  the  fashion,  as  they  dress 
in  the  fashion,  in  spite  of  their  own  knowledge  that  the 
fashion  is  absurd.  But  it  is  impossible  to  regard  an 
architect  who  takes  this  view  as  other  than  a trades- 
man, or  to  discuss  his  works  except  by  telling  what  are 
the  latest  modes,  in  the  manner  of  the  fashion  maea- 
zines.  It  seems  impossible  for  achitects  who  take  this 
view  of  their  art  to  take  their  art  seriously — anything 
like  so  seriously,  for  example,  as  they  take  their  incomes. 
But  for  architects  who  love  their  art  and  believe  in  it, 
the  point  of  “departure”  is  much  less  important  than 
the  point  of  arrival,  and  by  such  architects  the  histori- 
cal styles  of  architecture  will  be  rated  according  to  the 
help  they  give  in  solving  the  architectural  problems  of 
our  time.  We  have  seen  that  an  architect  who  starts 
from  Renaissance  architecture  and  an  architect  who 
starts  from  Gothic  architecture,  if  they  faithfully  scru- 
tinize their  precedents,  and  faithfully  discard  such  as 
are  inapplicable,  in  arriving  at  free  architecture  will 
arrive,  so  far  as  style  is  concerned,  at  much  the  same 
result.  If  this  process  of  analysis  wrere  to  be  carried 
on  for  a generation,  it  would  be  as  difficult,  and  as 
purely  a matter  of  speculative  curiosity,  to  trace  the 
sources  of  Ensrlish  and  American  architecture  as  the 

o 

sources  of  the  composite  and  living  English  language, 
which  is  adequate  to  every  expression.  We  have  been 
blaming  the  architects  for  accepting  the  forms  of  past 
architecture  without  analyzing  them.  But,  indeed,  if 
architects  had  been  analysts,  they  would  generations 


CONCERNING  OUEEN  ANNE 


51 

aero  have  recognized  in  their  work  that  we  do  live  in 
times  unknown  to  the  ancients,  whether  of  Athens  in 
the  fifth  century  before  our  era,  or  of  Western  Europe 
in  the  thirteenth  century  of  our  era ; that  within  the 
limits  set  by  fact  and  reason  there  is  ample  room  for 
the  exercise  of  all  accomplished  talents,  and  verge 
enough  for  the  expression  of  all  sane  temperaments, 
while  without  these  limits  nothing  can  be  done  that 
will  stand  the  test  of  fact  and  reason,  which  is  the  test 
of  time;  that  “effects”  cannot  precede  causes,  and 
that  the  rudest  art  which  is  sincere  is  living  and  in  the 
way  to  be  refined,  while  the  most  refined  art  that  has 
lost  its  meaning  can  never  be  made  alive.  The  recog- 
nition of  these  things  would  have  prevented  a vagary 
like  the  frivolities  and  affectations  of  the  new  depart- 
ure from  attaining  any  vogue,  but  it  would  also  have 
prevented  the  establishment  of  any  technical  styles  in 
modern  building,  and  instead  of  reproducing  “ exam- 
ples” of  one  historical  style  and  then  of  another,  and 
then  of  a mixture  of  two,  architects  would  be  producing 
and  writers  would  be  discussing  works  of  the  great  art 
of  architecture. 


THE  VANDERBILT  HOUSES 


A S an  architectural  work,  the  house  of  Mr.  W.  K. 
^ ^ Vanderbilt  is  perhaps  the  most  noteworthy  of  the 
four  large  and  costly  mansions  herewith  illustrated. 
In  this  a design  intrinsically  interesting  has  been  car- 
ried out  with  an  amplitude  of  means  of  all  kinds  which 
yet  nowhere  degenerates  into  profusion  or  mere  osten- 
tation. The  dimensions  are  generous  for  a town  house, 
and  they  have  been  made  the  most  of  by  a breadth  of 
treatment  and  an  emphasis  of  structure,  in  the  walls  at 
least,  which  enable  the  building  to  carry  with  grace  a 
wealth  of  ornament  under  which  many  buildings  of  equal 
size  would  disappear.  The  material  is  a soft  gray  lime- 
stone, which  leaves  much  to  be  desired  in  color,  though 
in  texture  it  is  equally  adapted  to  the  simple  and  mas- 
sive treatment  of  the  walls  and  to  the  minute  delicacy 
of  the  decoration,  both  architectural  and  sculptural. 
It  is  very  much  to  the  credit  of  the  designer  that 
in  spite  of  a richness  without  many  examples  in  our 
domestic  architecture,  except  in  the  other  dwellings  of 
this  same  series,  the  first  impression  of  his  work,  and 
the  most  abiding,  is  that  of  power  and  massiveness. 
This  is  secured  mainly  by  the  unbroken  breadth  of 
the  flank  of  wall  between  the  porch  and  the  angle 
on  the  Fifth  Avenue  front  of  the  building — unbroken 
except  by  the  simple  and  square-headed  openings  with 
which  it  is  pierced,  and  the  crisp  and  emphatic  though 


HOUSE  OF  W.  K.  VANDERBILT. 

R.  M.  Hunt,  Architect. 


THE  VANDERBILT  HOUSES 


55 


not  excessive  string  courses  which  traverse  it  and  mark 
the  division  of  the  stories.  It  is  questionable  whether 
this  massiveness  is  not  carried  too  far,  but  everybody 
will  admit  that  an  excessive  weight  of  wall  is  a “good 
fault”  in  the  street  architecture  of  New  York,  and 
that  of  the  two,  a dwelling  is  more  dignified  which  ap- 
proaches the  solidity  proper  to  a prison  than  one  that 
emulates  the  precarious  lightness  proper  to  a green- 
house. The  depth  of  the  porch  and  of  the  recessed  bal- 
cony over  it  in  the  central  division  of  the  avenue  front 
assists  this  expression  of  solidity,  and  helps  the  building 
to  wear  its  burden  of  decoration  “ lightly,  like  a flower.” 
The  richness,  as  we  have  said,  is  almost  unexampled  in 
New  York.  Of  strictly  architectural  decoration — that  is, 
of  members  and  details  which  are  usually  designed  by 
the  architect  of  a building— there  is  a copiousness 
which  is  only  saved  by  the  means  just  indicated  from 
becoming  an  embarrassment  of  riches.  All  this  work 
is  exquisite  in  execution.  In  design  it  is  generally  in- 
teresting and  scholarly,  though  there  is  common  to  all 
of  it  the  defect  of  being  too  small  to  be  thoroughly  well 
seen  and  thoroughly  effective.  The  uniformity  of  this 
defect  of  scale  seems  to  prove  that  the  architect  erred 
in  estimating  the  effect  of  his  design  in  the  colorless 
material  employed.  The  decoration  of  the  recess  of  the 
balcony,  too,  loses  effect  by  being  entirely  unrelated  to 
the  Construction,  and  the  stone  trellis  with  which  the 
turret  at  the  angle  is  overlaid  is  equally  irrelevant  to 
the  object  to  which  it  is  applied.  Architectural  decora- 
tion ceases  to  be  such  when  it  ceases  to  be  a develop- 
ment of  the  structure;  and  these  exceptions,  by  their 
comparative  ineffectiveness,  confirm  the  wisdom  of  the 
rule  by  which  elsewhere  throughout  the  building  the 
ornament  is  used  to  emphasize  the  structure,  and 
thereby  gains  greatly  in  impressiveness  and  in  charm. 


56 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


I he  sculptural  decoration,  in  contradistinction  to 
that  strictly  architectural,  equally  abounds.  By  sculpt- 
ural decoration  is  meant  that  designed  as  well  as  ex- 
ecuted by  the  sculptor,  and  in  regard  to  which  the  only 
care  of  the  architect  is  to  provide  places  for  it,  and  so 
to  frame  it  that,  if  it  does  not  help,  it  may  not  injure,  the 
architecture  to  which  it  is  attached.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  of  this  that  it  is  much  the  most  important  and 
interesting  work  in  decorative  sculpture  which  is  to  be 
seen  out-of-doors  in  New  York.  The  most  noteworthy 
piece  of  it,  perhaps,  is  the  procession  of  cherubic  musi- 
cians girdling  the  frieze-like  band  of  the  corbel  which 
carries  the  oriel  of  the  southern  front.*  The  execution 
elsewhere,  in  the  panels  under  and  between  the  win- 
dows, and  in  the  pilasters  of  the  bay,  is  equally  good, 
but  the  design  is  nowhere  else  so  effective.  One  need 
not  be  a purist,  indeed,  to  find  fault  with  the  introduc- 
tion of  these  pilasters  at  the  angles  of  the  bay  and  on 
the  curve  of  the  oriel,  which  are  so  clearly  not  struc- 
tural members,  actual  or  symbolic,  and  which  are  so 
clearly  introduced  for  the  sake  of  the  ornament  they 
bear,  although  he  may  condone  the  fault  for  the  pretti- 
ness of  the  ornament  generally  in  design,  and  its  un- 
failing care  and  delicacy  of  execution.  The  only 
criticism  possible,  indeed,  upon  the  execution  of  this 
work  is,  that  it  is  too  exquisite,  and  reduces  the  text- 
ure of  carved  stone  too  nearly  to  the  more  facile  sur- 
face of  moulded  clay. 

One’s  admiration  of  Mr.  Hunt’s  spirited  and  scholarly 
design  does  not  indeed  cease  with  the  walls  of  the  house; 
but  it  must  be  owned  that  it  undergoes  some  modifica- 
tion above  the  cornice.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the  sky- 
line is  so  effective  as  might  have  been  expected  from 
what  is  beneath  it.  There  is  an  undeniable  piquancy 

* See  illustration,  page  39. 


THE  VANDERBILT  HOUSES 


57 


about  the  statued  gable  which  terminates  the  roof  of 
the  principal  mass,  and  the  relation  between  this  roof 
and  the  steep  hood  of  the  turret  is  picturesque,  taken 
alone.  Unfortunately,  it  cannot  be  taken  alone,  and 
the  effect  of  the  whole  series  of  roofs  is  not  a harmo- 
nious grouping,  but — there  is  no  other  word  for  it — a 
“huddle.”  It  is  in  the  roof,  too,  that  the  shortcomings 
of  the  architect  in  the  solution  of  what  may  be  called 
his  academic  problem  are  most  apparent.  The  style 
of  his  work  is  the  transitional  style  of  France,  the  modi- 
fication of  mediaeval  architecture  under  the  influence 
of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  until  what  was  all  Gothic 
at  the  beginning  of  the  transition  had  become  all  classic 
at  its  close.  This  is,  in  fact,  an  attempt  to  summarize 
in  one  building  the  history  of  a most  active  and  fruit- 
ful century  in  the  history  of  architecture,  which  in- 
cluded the  late  Gothic  of  the  fifteenth  century  and 
the  early  Renaissance  of  the  sixteenth,  and  spanned 
the  distance  from  the  minute  and  complicated  model- 
ling of  the  Palais  de  Justice  at  Rouen  and  the  Hotel 
Cluny  at  Paris,  to  the  romantic  classicism  of  the  great 
chateaux  of  the  Loire.  Certainly  the  attempt  does  not 
lack  boldness.  Here  we  have  in  one  building  the  super- 
imposed bases  and  interpenetrating  mouldings  of  the 
latest  French  Gothic  and  the  fish-bladder  tracery  of  the 
Renaissance,  and  in  the  dormers  the  stride  from  the 
ogee  canopies  of  Rouen  to  the  prim  pilasters  and  pedi- 
ment of  Orleans.  Mr.  Hunt’s  skill  has  not  sufficed  to 
introduce  together  these  features,  the  outcomes  of 
different  modes  of  thought  as  well  as  of  different  sys- 
tems of  construction,  without  a visible  incongruity;  nor 
are  they  in  all  cases  successful,  taken  singly.  The  large 
and  elaborate  dormer  over  the  entrance,  especially,  in- 
stead of  being  a visible  reconciliation  of  the  two  styles, 
is  a visible  demonstration  that  they  cannot  be  recon- 
8 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


58 

died.  A complete  construction  of  post  and  lintel,  of 
pilaster  and  entablature,  is  supplemented  by  another 
construction  of  flying  buttresses  which  are  clearly  super- 
fluous and  irrelevant,  and  which,  instead  of  resisting 
the  thrust  of  an  arch,  have  the  appearance  of  ineffectu- 
ally “shoring  up”  a structure  which,  though  complete, 
is  unstable. 

One  is  inclined  to  ascribe  the  lack  of  unity  and  repose 
which  the  disturbed  sky-line  of  the  building  entails  upon 
it,  and  which  somewhat  impairs  the  dignity  of  an  other- 
wise dignified  and  always  animated  design,  to  the  angle 
turret  of  which  the  architect  was  evidently  enamoured. 
We  may  share  his  liking  for  it,  and  admit  it  to  be  an  ex- 
tremely pretty  thing,  without  admitting  tjiat  it  belongs  to 
this  building.  The  leading  motive  of  the  composition  is 
evidently  the  “ pyramidization,”  to  borrow  Mr.  Thomas 
Hope’s  uncouth  word,  of  the  whole  building  towards  the 
apex  of  the  main  mass  at  the  angle,  from  the  point  of 
view  from  which  the  illustration  is  taken.  It  is  clearly  to 
assist  and  emphasize  the  ascent  and  convergence  of  all 
the  lines  of  the  building  to  this  apex,  and  to  enhance 
the  apparent  dimensions,  that  this  mass  is  raised  a 
story,  and  the  extremities  of  the  building  allowed  to  fall 
away,  and  it  is  in  order  to  account  for  the  emphasizing 
of  this. mass  by  a separate  roof  that  the  somewhat  awk- 
ward expedient  has  been  adopted  of  dropping  the  cor- 
nice on  the  street  side  below  the  eaves.  New  York 
readers  who  are  familiar  with  the  aspect  of  the  Dry 
Dock  Savings-Bank  in  the  Bowery  will  know  what  is 
meant  by  this  “ pyramidization,”  and  will  remember  how 
it  is  there  attained.  Now  it  happens  that  it  is  pre- 
cisely this  intention  which  in  the  present  instance  is 
obscured  and  partly  defeated  by  the  tormenting  of  the 
sky-line,  which  in  turn  may  be  traced  to  the  insistence 
of  the  architect  upon  his  extremely  pretty  but  irrele- 


HOUSE  OF  CORNELIUS  VANDERBILT. 

George  B.  Post,  Architect. 


THE  VANDERBILT  HOUSES 


6l 

vant  turret.  It  is  a good  lesson  in  architecture  to  find 
that  the  effect  of  a whole  may  be  so  much  impaired  by 
one  of  the  most  successful  of  the  parts,  and  that  even 
when  “ the  thing  ” is  really  rich  and  rare,  we  may  still 
be  unsatisfied  how  it  “got  there.”  Happily  neither 
this  shortcoming,  nor  shortcomings  much  graver,  could 
prevent  such  a work  as  this  from  being  an  ornament 
to  the  city,  and  an  honorable  monument  to  its  archi- 
tect. 

Perhaps  it  is  because  Mr.  Post,  the  architect  of  the 
house  of  Mr.  Cornelius  Vanderbilt,  has  not  attempted 
so  much  as  Mr.  Hunt  that  his  work  may  be  called  at 
once  more  successful  and  less  interesting.  In  color  it 
has  more  and  in  design  less  of  variety.  P'or  the  mo- 
notony of  gray  wall  and  black  roof  it  substitutes  red 
brick,  with  wrought  work  of  the  same  gray  limestone 
employed  in  the  house  we  have  been  talking  of, 
and  with  a red  slated  roof  broken  by  great  stone 
dormers.  It  is  much  more  simple  and  compact  in 
composition  than  the  other,  for  the  main  house  is  a 
parallelogram  brought  together  under  one  great  four- 
hipped roof,  and  the  wing  is  here  a very  subordinate 
appendage.  It  is  thus  much  simpler,  much  more  within 
the  conventional  decorum  of  a town  mansion  in  its 
scheme,  while  it  is  equally  far  from  having  the  appear- 
ance of  having  been  designed  by  contract,  and  is 
studied  with  equal  thoroughness,  although  with  a very 
different  motive.  In  the  matter  of  color,  it  is  undeni- 
able that  the  brick-work  has  in  places  a patchy  look  by 
reason  of  the  comparatively  small  quantities  in  which 
it ‘is  used,  the  whole  front  on  the  avenue  being  virtu- 
ally of  highly  wrought  stone,  and  it  seems  clear  that 
the  building  would  have  gained  if  the  brick  had  been 
omitted  altogether  from  this  front.  On  the  street  front 
the  mode  of  treatment  adopted  might  very  possibly 


62 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


have  made  the  building  dull  and  monotonous  if  it  had 
been  built  in  monochrome,  as  assuredly  the  addition  of 
a strong  contrast  of  color  would  have  made  the  more 
varied  design  of  the  other  painfully  restless.  In  style 
the  two  buildings  offer  a curious  resemblance  and  a 
curious  contrast.  This  also  is  a French  chateau,  but 
a French  chateau  of  the  period  after  the  transition, 
when  all  detail  had  been  thoroughly  classicized,  and 
only  a romantic  wilfulness  and  freedom  of  composition 
recalled  the  architecture  of  the  Middle  Aares.  Here 
are  the  shell  frieze  of  Blois  and  the  fish-bladder  tracery 
of  Orleans,  without  the  Gothic  detail  which  in  the 
French  Renaissance  is  so  often  found  side  by  side  with 
them.  The  carving  here,  equally  well  executed  for  its 
purpose,  does  not  appeal  so  much  to  admiration  for  its 
execution,  for  the  reason  that  it  is  all  strictly  archi- 
tectural, and  not  directly  imitative.  In  design  it  is  for 
its  purpose  equally  well  studied ; in  scale,  indeed,  is 
much  better  studied,  so  that  the  detail,  which  is  often 
lost  in  the  ineffectual  minuteness  of  the  carving  in  the 
former  case,  here  takes  its  place  with  emphasis.  Per- 
haps in  some  instances  it  takes  its  place  with  too  much 
emphasis,  as  in  the  modelling  of  the  arches  of  the  first 
floor;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  a clear  lack 
of  vigor  in  the  brackets  which  carry  the  balcony  of  the 
third  story,  and  in  the  treatment  of  the  spiral  shaft 
upon  which  rests  the  corbelled  turret  at  the  outer 
angle.  But  these  defects  of  design  seem  to  be  quite 
deliberate,  and  it  seems,  upon  the  whole,  that  the  build- 
in  o-  looks  as  the  architect  intended  it  to  look,  in  a 

O 

more  accurate  sense  than  can  be  said  of  its  competitor. 
The  leading  motive  of  composition  in  that  was  the 
“ pyramidization  ” at  the  angle.  The  leading  motive  of 
this  may  be  assigned  to  the  development  of  the  floor 
lines.  The  perpendicular  lines  are  entirely  subordi- 


THE  VANDERBILT  HOUSES 


65 

nated  to  these — so  far  subordinated,  indeed,  that  the 
axial  lines  of  the  openings  in  the  lower  stories  are  dis- 
regarded in  the  upper — and  the  horizontal  lines  are 
wrought  by  modelling  and  decoration  into  emphatic 
belts,  graduated  in  richness  from  the  simple  basement 
course  to  the  very  rich  and  elaborate  cornice.  We 
may  say  here,  too,  that  our  admiration  grows  fainter 
above  this  line ; for  the  exaggerated  dormers,  excessive 
as  dormers  and  inadequate  as  gables,  are  the  least 
successful  features  of  the  building,  while  in  their  deco- 
ration, alone  in  the  building,  constructive  propriety  is 
abandoned.  But  the  great  and  simple  roof  certainly 
prevents  the  building  from  straggling,  as  its  neighbor 
tends  to  do,  while  the  angle  turrets  at  its  base  not  only 
relieve  its  outline  of  monotonous  heaviness,  but  are 
clever  expedients  for  stopping  the  lines  of  its  angles. 
Upon  the  whole,  one  may  say  of  Mr.  Post’s  design  that 
it  is  a thoroughly  workmanlike  piece  of  work,  and  may 
even  find  less  fault  with  it  than  with  the  more  ambi- 
tious work  of  Mr.  Hunt;  though,  indeed,  he  may  as- 
cribe this  to  his  belief  that  there  is  less  in  it  to  talk 
about  or  to  think  about. 

Between  either  of  these  and  the  brown-stone  houses 
which  have  been  built  for  Mr.  William  H.  Vanderbilt, 
after  the  designs  of  Messrs.  Herter,  the  decorators,  a 
wide  architectural  gulf  is  fixed.  We  found  a leading 
motive  in  each  of  the  others ; but  what  leading  motive, 
or,  indeed,  what  subordinate  motive,  of  an  architectural 
kind,  can  be  found  here  ? There  is  indeed  no  develop- 
ment of  lines  or  of  masses,  and  no  organized  relation 
of  parts  is  aimed  at.  The  openings  are  not  grouped 
or  spaced  so  as  to  tell  the  story  of  the  interior,  nor  so 
as  to  bear  any  reference  to  each  other,  nor  are  the 
structural  features  which  every  building  must  possess 
brought  out  by  modelling;  nor  is  the  ornament  applied 
9 


66 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


to  accentuate  the  structural  features,  nor  is  it  de- 
signed with  reference  either  to  its  place  or  to  its  func- 
tion as  ornament.  The  fluted  pilasters  of  the  second 
story  seem  to  be  meant,  indeed,  to  re-enforce  the  angles 
of  the  projecting  portions  of  the  wall.  But  this  inten- 
tion is  abandoned  in  the  first  and  in  the  third  stories, 
in  which  a belt  of  carved  foliage  is  run  to  the  angles  of 
the  wall,  without  reference  to  the  lines  of  the  pilasters. 
This  foliage  is  in  workmanship  as  careful  as  possible — 
as  careful,  indeed,  as  the  carving  in  either  of  the  ar- 
chitectural works  which  we  have  been  discussing.  Yet 
its  perfection  gives  no  pleasure  to  the  spectator,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  build- 
insr  in  the  walls  of  which  it  is  cut.  Much  of  the  detail  is 

o 

carefully  designed,  but  the  absence  of  a general  design 
makes  it  ineffective.  Except  for  the  refinement  of  some 
of  this  detail,  the  building  would  be  as  vacant  of  archi- 
tectural interest  as  any  work  of  our  architectural  period 
of  darkness.  The  Stewart  mansion  does  not  interest 
students  of  architecture ; but  the  Stewart  mansion  itself 
exhibits  a nearer  approach  than  these  houses  to  an 
architectural  design,  and  certainly  a coherent  design 
with  coarse  detail  is  less  depressing,  even  if  it  be  more 
irritating,  than  an  entire  absence  of  architectural  mean- 
ing, with  here  and  there  a pretty  architectural  phrase 
which  in  some  other  context  may  have  meant  some- 
thing. These  houses  have  another  misfortune  in  their 
very  lugubrious  color.  A vivid  piece  of  painted  deco- 
ration in  the  recessed  balcony  of  the  nearer  is  a grateful 
oasis  in  the  gloomy  waste  of  rubbed  sandstone,  and 
some  relief  to  its  monotony  is  also  afforded  by  the  gild- 
ed railings  of  the  windows  at  each  side  of  this  bal- 
cony. But  it  is  to  be  h-oped  that  courage  may  be  found 
to  let  loose  a discreet  decorator  with  unlimited  gold- 
leaf  upon  the  whole  sad  fronts.  A mode  of  decoration 


THE  VANDERBILT  HOUSES  67 

which  has  been  found  so  effective  in  the  fogs  of  Lon- 
don might  profitably  be  employed  to  animate  facades 
which  are  in  no  danger  of  becoming  too  joyous.  It 
would  not  be  fair  to  leave  these  architectural  failures, 
which  are  in  so  unpleasant  contrast  to  the  encouraging 
architectural  success  achieved  in  the  other  Vanderbilt 
houses,  without  noting  one  excellent  piece  of  design  in 
the  railings  which  surround  them,  in  which  an  orig- 
inal,  characteristic,  and  successful  treatment  of  metal 
has  been  attained,  and  which,  as  works  of  art,  are  really 
of  more  value  than  the  houses  they  protect. 


POST  AND  RAILING,  W.  H.  VANDERBILT’S  HOUSE. 


THE  BROOKLYN  BRIDGE  AS  A MONUMENT 


r I SHE  total  length  of  the  bridge  is  5989  feet,  of  which 
the  central  span  between  the  towers  is  1595  feet  6 
inches,  the  “land  spans  "from  the  towers  to  the  anchor- 
ages each  930  feet,  the  approach  on  the  New  York  side 
1562  feet  6 inches,  and  on  the  steeper  Brooklyn  side  971 
feet.  These  dimensions  do  not  make  this  the  longest 
brido-e  in  the  world.  But  when  it  was  built  there  was  no 

O 

single  span  which  approached  the  central  span  over  the 
East  River;  and  though  it  has  since  been  exceeded  by 
two  spans  of  the  Forth  Bridge, in  Scotland (1 7 10-feeteach, 
sustained  by  cantilevers),  it  remains  by  far  the  largest 
example  of  a chain-bridge.  It  is  half  as  long  again  as 
Roebling’s  Cincinnati  Bridge  (1057  feet  between  tow- 
ers), and  nearly  twice  as  long  as  the  same  engineer’s 
Niagara  Bridge  (821  feet).  The  span  of  the  ill-fated 
bridge  over  the  Ohio  at  Wheeling,  which  was  built  in 
1848,  and  blown  down  in  1854,  was  1010  feet.  Note- 
worthy suspension-bridges  in  Europe  are  Telford’s,  over 
the  Menai  Straits  (589  feet),  finished  in  1825;  Chaley’s 
bridge,  at  Fribourg  (870  feet),  finished  in  1834;  and 
Tierney  Clark’s  bridge  over  the  Danube  at  Pesth  (670 
feet),  finished  in  1849.  The  longest  spans  bridged  oth- 
erwise than  by  a roadway  hung  from  cables  are  the  cen- 
tral spans  of  Stephenson’s  Britannia  (box  girder)  Bridge 
(459  feet),  of  Eads’s  St.  Louis  Bridge,  of  steel  arches  (520 
feet),  and  of  the  beautiful  Washington  Bridge,  of  steel 


THE  BRIDGE  FROM  THE  BROOKLYN  SIDE. 


THE  BROOKLYN  BRIDGE  AS  A MONUMENT 


71 


arches,  at  New  York  (510  feet).  The  largest  span  of  an 
arch  of  masonry  known  to  have  been  built  in  a bridge 
(251  feet)  was  in  that  built  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  destroyed  by  Carmagnola  in  the  fifteenth,  which 
crossed  the  Adda  at  Trezzo.  The  largest  now  stand- 
ing (220  feet)  is  an  American  work,  the  arch  designed 
and  built  by  General  Meigs  to  carry  the  Washington 
Aqueduct  over  Cabin  John  Creek.  The  second  is  that 
of  the  Grosvenor  Bridge  at  Chester  (200  feet),  and  the 
third  the  central  arch  of  London  Bridge  (152  feet). 

The  Brooklyn  Bridge  is  thus  one  of  the  mechanical 
wonders  of  the  world,  one  of  the  greatest  and  most 
characteristic  of  the  monuments  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Its  towers,  at  least,  bid  fair  to  outlast  every  struct- 
ure of  which  they  command  a view.  Everybody  recalls 
Macaulay’s  prophecy  of  the  time  “ when  some  traveller 
from  New  Zealand  shall,  in  the  midst  of  a vast  solitude, 
take  his  stand  upon  a broken  arch  of  London  Bridge, 
to  sketch  the  ruins  of  St.  Paul’s.”  But  when  our  New- 
Zealander  takes  his  stand  above  the  saddles  that  are  now 
ridden  by  the  cables  of  the  bridge,  to  look  over  the  site 
of  a forsaken  city,  there  will  be  no  ruins  of  churches — 
at  least,  of  churches  now  in  being — for  him  to  sketch 
or  see.  The  web  of  woven  steel  that  now  harms  be- 

O 

tween  the  stark  masses  of  the  towers  may  have  disap- 
peared, its  slender  filaments  rusted  into  nothingness 
under  the  slow  corrosion  of  the  centuries.  Its  builders 
and  the  generation  for  which  they  wrought  may  have 
been  as  long  forgotten  as  are  now  the  builders  of  the 
Pyramids,  whereof  the  traveller,  “ as  he  paceth  amazedly 
those  deserts,”  asks  the  Historic  Muse  “ who  budded 
them;  and  she  mumbleth  something,  but  what  it  is  he 
heareth  not.”  It  is  not  unimaginable  that  our  future 
archzeologist,  looking  from  one  of  these  towers  upon 
the  solitude  of  a mastless  river  and  a dispeopled  land, 


72 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


may  have  no  other  means  of  reconstructing  our  civiliza- 
tion than  that  which  is  furnished  him  by  the  tower  on 
which  he  stands.  What  will  his  judgment  of  us  be? 

This,  or  something  like  this,  ought  to  be  a question 
with  every  man  who  builds  a structure  which  is  meant 
to  outlast  him,  whether  it  be  a temple  of  religion  or  a 
work  of  bare  utility  like  this.  It  so  happens  that  the 
work  which  is  likely  to  be  our  most  durable  monument, 
and  to  convey  some  knowledge  of  us  to  the  most  remote 
posterity,  is  a work  of  bare  utility;  not  a shrine,  not  a 
fortress,  not  a palace,  but  a bridge.  This  is  in  itself 
characteristic  of  our  time.  It  is  true  of  no  other  peo- 
ple since  the  Romans,  and  of  none  before.  Like  the 
Roman  remains,  the  duration  of  this  work  of  ours  will 
show  that  we  knew  how  to  build.  “A  Roman  work,” 
we  often  hear  it  said  of  the  bridge,  and  it  is  in  many 
ways  true.  It  is  far  beyond  any  Roman  monument  in 
refinement  of  mechanical  skill.  It  is  Roman  in  its  mas- 
siveness and  durability.  It  is  Roman,  too,  in  its  disre- 
gard of  art,  in  resting  satisfied  with  the  practical  solu- 
tion of  the  great  problem  of  its  builders,  without  a sign 
of  that  skill  which  would  have  explained  and  emphasized 
the  process  of  construction  at  every  step,  and  every- 
where, in  whole  and  in  part,  made  the  structure  tell  of 
the  work  it  was  doing.  There  have  been  periods  in  his- 
tory when  this  aesthetic  purpose  would  have  seemed  to 
the  builder  of  such  a monument  as  much  a matter  of 
course,  as  necessary  a part  of  his  work,  as  the  practical 
purpose  which  animated  the  designer  of  the  Brooklyn 
Bridge.  It  would  have  seemed  so  to  the  engineer  of  a 
bridge  in  Athens  in  the  second  century  before  our  era, 
or  to  the  engineer  of  a bridge  in  Western  Europe  in  the 
thirteenth  century  of  our  era.  The  utilitarian  treatment 
of  our  monument  is  as  striking  and  as  characteristic  a 
mark  of  the  period  as  its  utilitarian  purpose.  It  is  a 


THE  BROOKLYN  BRIDGE  AS  A MONUMENT 


73 

noble  work  of  engineering;  it  is  not  a work  of  archi- 
tecture. 

The  most  strictly  scientific  of  constructors  would 
scarcely  take  the  ground  that  he  did  not  care  how  his 
work  looked,  when  his  work  was  so  conspicuous  and  so 
durable  as  the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  and  he  must  be  aware 
that  a training  in  scientific  construction  alone  will  not 
secure  an  architectural  result.  It  is  more  probable  that 
he  looks  upon  the  current  architectural  devices  as  frivo- 
lous and  irrelevant  to  the  work  upon  which  he  is  en- 
cased, and  consoles  himself  for  his  isrnorance  of  them 
by  contempt.  Architecture  is  to  him  the  unintelligent 
use  of  building  material.  Assuredly  this  view  is  borne 
out  by  a majority  of  the  “ architecturesque  ” buildings 
that  he  sees,  and  he  does  not  lack  express  authority  for 
it.  Whereas  the  engineer’s  definition  of  good  masonry 
is  “ the  least  material  to  perform  a certain  duty,”  Mr. 
Fergusson  declares  that  “an  architect  ought  always  to 
allow  himself  such  a margin  of  strength  that  he  may 
disregard  or  play  with  his  construction and  Mr.  Rus- 
kin  defines  architecture  to  be  the  addition  to  a building: 
of  unnecessary  features.  An  engineer  has,  therefore, 
some  warrant  for  considering  that  he  is  sacrificing  to 
the  graces  and  doing  all  that  can  reasonably  be  expect- 
ed of  him  to  produce  an  architectural  monument,  if  in 
designing  the  piers  of  a chain-bridge  he  employs  an 
unnecessary  amount  of  material  and  adds  unnecessary 
features.  But  if  we  go  back  to  the  time  when  engineers 
were  artists,  and  study  what  a modern  scientific  writer 
has  described  as  “ that  paragon  of  constructive  skill,  a 
Pointed  cathedral,”  we  shall  find  that  the  architecture 
and  the  construction  cannot  be  disjoined.  The  work 
of  the  mediaeval  builder  in  his  capacity  of  artist  was 
to  expound,  emphasize,  and  refine  upon  the  work  he 
did  in  his  capacity  of  constructor,  and  to  develop  and 
io 


74 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


heighten  its  inherent  effect.  And  it  is  of  this  kind  of 
skill  that  the  work  of  the  modern  engineer,  in  so  far  as 
he  is  only  an  engineer,  shows  no  trace. 

Reduced  to  its  simplest  expression,  and  as  it  has  actu- 
ally been  used  for  unknown  periods  in  Asia  and  in  South 
America,  a suspension-bridge  consists  of  two  parallel 
ropes  swung  from  side  to  side  of  a ravine,  and  carrying 
the  platform  over  which  the  passenger  walks.  As  the 
span  increases,  so  that  the  dip  makes  the  ropes  imprac- 
ticable, the  land  ends  of  the  ropes  are  hoisted  some  dis- 
tance above  the  roadway  which  they  carry.  If  nothing 
can  be  found  there  strong  enough  to  hold  them,  they 
are  simply  passed  over,  say,  forked  trees,  and  the  ends 
made  fast  to  other  trees  or  held  down  with  stones.  This 
is  the  essential  construction  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge. 
The  ropes  become  four  cables  sixteen  inches  thick,  of 
5541  steel  wires;  the  forked  tree  becomes  a tower  276 
feet  high,  and  8260  square  feet  in  area  at  the  base;  the 
bowlder  to  hold  down  the  end  of  the  rope  becomes  a 
mass  of  masonry  of  60,000  tons’  weight ; the  shaky  plat- 
form becomes  a great  street,  85  feet  wide,  of  five  firm 
roadways.  But  the  man  who  first  carried  his  rope  over 
the  forked  tree  was  the  inventor  of  the  arrangement 
which,  developed  through  all  the  refinements  of  modern 
mechanics,  forms  the  groundwork  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge. 

This  statement  of  the  germinal  idea  of  a chain-bridge 
will,  perhaps,  give  a clearer  notion  of  the  functions  of  the 
several  parts  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  than  a considera- 
tion of  the  complicated  structure  in  its  ultimate  evolu- 
tion, in  which  these  functions  are  partly  lost  sight  of. 
But  if  the  structure  had  been  architecturally  designed, 
these  things  would  have  been  emphasized  at  every  point 
and  in  every  way.  The  function  of  the  great  “ towers,” 
so  called,  being  merely  to  hold  up  the  cables,  it  is  plain 
that  three  isolated  piers  would  have  performed  that  func- 


THE  BROOKLYN  BRIDGE  AS  A MONUMENT 


75 


tion,  and  the  stability  of  these  piers,  loaded  as  they  are 
by  the  cables,  would  very  possibly  have  been  assured, 
even  if  they  had  been  completely  detached  from  each 
other.  But  in  order  at  once  to  stiffen  and  to  load  them, 
so  as  to  make  the  area  of  resistance  to  the  force  of  the 
wind  equal  to  the  whole  area  of  the  towers,  the  open- 
ings through  which  the  roadways  run  are  closed  above 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


76 

by  steep  pointed  arches,  and  the  spandrels  of  these  filled 
with  a wall  which  rises  to  the  summit  of  the  piers,  where 
a fiat  coping  covers  the  whole.  There  is  a woful  lack 
of  expression  in  this  arrangement.  The  piers  should 
assert  themselves  starkly  and  unmistakably  as  the  bones 
of  the  structure,  and  the  wall  above  the  arches  be  sub- 
ordinated to  a mere  filling.  It  should  be  distinctly  with- 
drawn from  the  face  of  the  piers  instead  of  being,  as  in 
fact  it  is,  only  distinguished  from  them  by  their  shal- 
low and  ineffectual  projections.  It  should  be  distinctly 
dropped  below  their  summits  instead  of  rising  to  the 
same  height,  and  being  included  under  a common  cor- 
nice. To  see  what  a difference  in  effect  this  very  obvi- 
ous differentiation  of  parts  would  have  made,  glance  at 
the  sketch  of  a suspension-bridge  at  Minneapolis.  This 
is  not,  upon  the  whole,  a laudable  design,  and  it  contains 
several  survivals  of  conventional  architectural  forms 
meaningless  in  their  present  place.  But  the  mere  sub- 
duing of  the  archway  to  a strut  between  the  piers  ex- 
plains— not  forcibly,  perhaps,  nor  elegantly,  but  unmis- 
takably— the  main  purpose  of  the  structure,  and  the 
functional  relation  of  its  parts.  A drawing  of  one  of 
the  towers  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  without  its  cables 
would  tell  the  spectator  nothing;  the  structure  itself 
will  tell  our  New-Zealander  nothing  of  its  uses.  With 
its  flat  top  and  its  level  coping,  indicating  that  the  whole 
was  meant  to  be  evenly  loaded,  it  would  seem  to  be  the 
base  of  a missing  superstructure  rather  than  what  it  is. 

The  flatness  of  the  top  alone  conceals  instead  of  ex- 
pressing the  structure.  It  is  of  the  first  practical  neces- 
sity that  the  great  cables  should  move  freely  in  their 
saddles,  so  as  always  to  keep  the  pressure  upon  the 
piers  directly  vertical,  and  very  ingenious  appliances 
have  been  employed  to  attain  this  end,  and  to  avoid 
chafing  the  cables.  But  the  design  of  the  piers  them- 


THE  BROOKLYN  BRIDGE  AS  A MONUMENT 


77 


selves  tells  us  absolutely  nothing  of  all  this.  The  cable 
simply  disappears  on  one  side  and  reappears  on  the 
other,  as  if  it  were  two  separate  cables,  one  on  each 
side,  instead  of  one  continuous  chain.  Look  at  this 
section  of  the  top  of  the  tower,  and  see  how  an  exquisite 
refinement  of  mechanical  arrangement  may  coexist  with 
absolute  insensibility  to  the  desirableness  even  of  an 
architectural  expression  of  this  arrangement.  The  archi- 
tecture of  this  crowning  member  of  the  tower  has  nothin? 

o o 


Liftinj 


P] 

1 

Top  of  IVl 

L 

whatever  to  do  with  the  purpose  for  which  the  structure 
exists.  Is  it  not  perfectly  evident  that  an  architectural 
expression  of  this  mechanical  arrangement  would  require 
that  the  line  of  the  summit,  instead  of  this  meaningless 
flat  coping,  should,  to  begin  with,  be  a crest  of  roof,  its 
double  slope  following  the  line  of  the  cable  which  it  shel- 
ters ? Here  the  very  channel  through  which  the  cable 
runs  is  not  designed,  but  is  a mere  hole  occurring  casu- 
ally, and  not  by  premeditation,  in  the  midst  of  the  mould- 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


78 

ings  which  form  the  cornice  of  the  tower.  This  is  archi- 
tectural barbarism. 

Other  opportunities  offered  for  architectural  expres- 
sion in  the  towers  themselves  were  in  the  treatment  of 
the  buttresses,  in  the  treatment  of  the  balconies  which 
girdle  the  tower  at  the  height  of  the  roadway,  and  in 
the  modelling;  of  the  arches.  The  Orth  of  each  of  the 
towers  at  the  water-line  is  398  feet.  At  the  roof-course 
it  is  378  feet.  The  reduction  is  effected  by  means  of 
five  or  six  offsets,  which  withdraw  each  face  of  the  tower 
four  feet  between  the  bottom  and  the  top,  and  each  end 
six  feet.  The  counter-forts,  eight  in  all,  on  the  sides  of 
the  outer  piers  and  on  the  faces  of  all  the  piers,  are  mere 
applied  strips,  very  shallow  in  proportion  to  their  width, 
and  terminating  in  the  capital-like  projections  which  are 
casually  pierced  to  receive  the  cables.  It  may  make, 
perhaps,  no  serious  difference  in  the  mechanical  effi- 
ciency of  these  counter-forts  whether  their  area  be  nar- 
row and  deep  or  broad  and  shallow.  But  an  increase 
of  depth  in  proportion  to  width  would  of  itself,  with  its 
higher  lights  and  sharper  shadows,  have  made  forcible 
masses  of  what  are  now  ineffectual  features.  This  inher- 
ent effect  would  be  very  greatly  enhanced  if  the  offsets 
themselves  were  accentuated  by  sharp  and  decisive  mod- 
elling. As  it  is,  emphasis  seems  to  have  been  studi- 
ously avoided.  The  offsets  are  merely  long  batterings 
of  the  wall,  which  do  nothing  to  separate  the  piers  into 
related  parts  with  definite  transitions,  and  so  to  refine 
the  crudity  of  the  masses.  To  see  the  difference  be- 
tween a mechanical  and  a monumental  conception  of  a 
great  structure,  compare  these  towers  with  the  front  of 
Amiens,  or  of  Strasburg,  or  of  Notre  Dame  of  Paris. 
Of  course  the  designer  of  a modern  bridge  must  not  at- 
tempt to  reproduce  in  his  work  “those  misty  masses  of 
multitudinous  pinnacle  and  diademed  tower.”  That 


THE  BROOKLYN  BRIDGE  AS  A MONUMENT 


79 

would  be  a more  fatal  fault  than  the  rudeness  and  crude- 
ness with  which  we  have  to  charge  the  design  of  the 
towers  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge.  The  ornament  of  the 
cathedrals,  so  far  as  it  is  separable  from  their  structure, 
has  nothing  for  the  designer  of  the  bridge  even  of  sug- 
gestion.  But  to  see  how  masses  may  be  modelled  so  as 
to  be  made  to  speak,  look  at  the  modelled  masses  of  the 
tower  of  Amiens,  the  stark  lines  of  essential  structure 
framing  the  screen  of  wall  between  them,  in  contrast 
with  the  uniform  deadness  here  of  buttress  and  curtain 
wall ; the  crisp  emphasis  of  lines  of  light  and  hollows  of 
black  shade  which  mark  the  transitions  between  parts 
of  structure  in  the  west  front  of  Rheims,  in  contrast 
with  the  lack  of  emphasis  in  the  offsets  of  the  bridge 
tower;  the  spirit  of  the  gargoyled  balconies  that  belt 
the  towers  of  Notre  Dame,  and  the  spiritlessness  of  the 
parapeted  balconies  that  encircle  the  tower  of  the  bridge. 
And  note,  too  (we  are  not  now  speaking  of  the  decora- 
tion of  the  cathedrals),  that  all  this  transcendent  supe- 
riority arises  merely  from  a development  and  emphasis 
of  the  inherent  expression  of  the  masses  themselves, 
which  in  the  bridge  are  left  so  crude,  and  in  the  cathe- 
dral towers  are  refined  so  far.  It  need  not,  and  indeed 
should  not,  have  been  carried  so  far  in  this  architecture 
of  reason  and  utility  as  in  the  architecture  of  a poetical 
religion.  The  mere  rudiments  of  those  works  would 
have  furnished  all  the  expression  that  is  necessary  or  de- 
sirable here.  But  these  rudiments  are  wanting.  What 
can  we  say  but  that  the  designer  of  the  cathedral  began 
where  the  designer  of  the  bridge  left  off?  If  our  New- 
Zealander  should  extend  his  travels,  and  come  upon 
these  monuments  also,  what  would  be  his  surprise  at 
finding  documentary  proof  that  the  bridge  was  built  six 
hundred  years  after  the  cathedrals,  and  that  the  genera- 
tion which  built  the  bridge  looked  backward  and  down- 


8o 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


ward  upon  the  generation  which  built  the  cathedrals  as 
rude  and  barbarous  and  unreasoning  in  comparison  with 
themselves ! 

What  we  have  said  of  the  towers  is  true  also  of  the 
anchorages.  1 he  bowlder  which  the  Peruvian  rolls  upon 
the  end  of  his  rope  to  hold  it  down  is  here  a mass  of 
60,000  tons.  Scientifically  it  is  adjusted  to  its  purpose, 
no  doubt,  with  the  most  exact  nicety.  Artistically  it  is 
still  but  a bowlder  rolled  upon  a rope.  It  would  prob- 
ably be  impracticable  to  exhibit  the  anchor  plate  which 
takes  the  ultimate  strain  of  this  mile  and  more  of  cable, 
though  we  may  be  sure  that  our  Greek  or  our  Gothic 
bridge-builder  would  not  have  admitted  its  impractica- 
bilitv  without  as  exhaustive  an  investigation  as  the  mod- 
ern  bridge-builder  has  given  to  the  mechanical  aspects 
of  his  problem.  But  it  was  certainly  practicable  to  indi- 
cate the  function  of  the  anchorage  itself,  to  build  it  up 
in  masses  which  should  seem  to  hold  the  cable  to  the 
earth,  or  a double  arch  like  — or  rather  unlike  — the 
double  arch  of  the  main  tower,  turned  between  piers 
which  should  visibly  answer  the  same  purpose.  Instead 
of  either  of  these,  or  of  any  technical  device  for  the  same 
purpose,  the  weight  above  is  a crude  mass,  so  far  from 
being  adapted  to  its  function  in  its  form,  that  one  has  to 
look  with  some  care  to  find  it  from  the  street  below,  and 
to  distinguish  it  from  the  approaches. 

What  we  have  called  the  balconies  at  the  level  of  the 
roadway  are  not  “practical”  balconies,  since  they  open 
from  the  driveways,  and  not  from  the  walk,  and  are  not 
accessible  as  points  of  view.  The  purpose  of  a projec- 
tion at  this  point  is  to  secure  as  great  a breadth  as  pos- 
sible for  the  system  of  wind-braces  under  the  floor  of  the 
bridge.  This  purpose  is  attained  by  the  projection,  but 
is  only  masked  by  the  imitations  of  balconies,  instead  of 
being  architecturally  expressed,  as  it  might  have  been 


THE  BROOKLYN  BRIDGE  AS  A MONUMENT  gr 


unmistakably  expressed,  by  the  bold  projection  of  a gran- 
ite spur  from  the  angle  of  the  pier. 

There  are,  probably,  few  arches  in  the  world  — cer- 
tainly there  can  be  none  outside  of  works  of  modern 
engineering — of  anything  like  the  span,  height,  thick- 
ness, and  conspicuousness  of  those  in  the  bridge  towers 
which  are  so  little  effective.  Like  the  brute  mass  of 
wall  above  them,  they  are  impressive  only  by  magni- 
tude. The  great  depth  of  the  archway  is  only  seen  as 


itself  had  been  accentuated  by  modelling,  instead  of  be- 
ing weakened  by  the  actual  recession  of  its  voussoirs 
behind  the  plane  of  the  wall. 

The  approaches  themselves  are  greatly  impressive,  as 


a matter  of  mensuration, 
not  felt  as  a poetical  im- 
pression, as  it  would  have 
been  if  the  labors  of  the 
constructor  had  been  sup- 
plemented by  the  labors  of 
an  artist ; if  the  shallow 
strips  of  pier  had  become 
real  buttresses,  and  the 
jamb  and  arch  had  been 
narrowed  by  emphatic  suc- 
cessions of  withdrawal,  in- 
stead of  being  merely  tun- 
nelled through  the  mass ; 
if  the  intrados  of  the  arch 


/ 


SECTION  OF  TOP  AND  BACK  OF  ANCHORAGE. 
(SIDE  VIEW.) 


82 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


indeed  the  towers  are  also,  by  magnitude  and  massive- 
ness. The  street  bridges  are  uniformly  imposing  by 
size  and  span,  and  especially  attractive  also  by  reason 
of  the  fact  that  through  them  we  get  what  is  to  be  got 
nowhere  else  in  our  rectangular  city,  glimpses  and  “bits” 
of  buildings.  The  most  successful  of  them  all,  and  the 
most  successful  feature  architecturally  of  all  the  masonry 
of  the  bridge,  is  the  simple,  massive,  and  low  bridge  of 
two  arches  which  spans  North  William  Street,  in  New 
York.  The  arcades  between  the  streets  are  imposing 
by  number  and  repetition  as  well  as  by  massiveness,  and 
by  the  Roman  durability  which  marks  all  the  work. 
They  suffer,  however,  from  two  causes.  The  coping, 
the  arches,  and  the  piers,  which  are  the  emphatic  parts 
of  structure,  are  lighter  in  color  than  the  unempha- 
sized and  rock-faced  fields  of  the  wall,  and  this  is  always 
a misfortune  when  it  is  not  an  error.  The  arches  are 
of  the  form  called  “ Florentine” — that  is  to  say,  round 
within  and  pointed  without.  The  deepest  voussoirs  are 
thus  those  at  the  crown  of  the  arch.  This  is  the  reverse 
of  the  disposition  which  would  be  dictated  by  mechan- 
ical considerations  alone.  Architecturally  it  has  the 
drawback  of  interrupting  at  every  arch  the  successive 
and  diminishing  wheelings  which  make  a long  arcade 
of  great  openings  so  impressive  in  a perspective  view. 
The  form  seems  to  have  been  chosen  on  account  of  the 
facility  it  afforded,  by  lengthening  the  upper  voussoirs, 
to  conform  the  ridge  line  of  the  arches  to  the  slope  of 
the  roadway,  while  keeping  the  springing  line  horizon- 
tal. This  gradual  diminution  of  the  arches  shoreward 
enhances  the  apparent  length  of  the  approach  looking  in 
that  direction,  but  correspondingly  shortens  it  looking 
towards  the  bridge ; and  it  seems,  upon  the  whole,  that 
it  would  have  been  better  to  carry  the  arches  through 
level,  without  attempting  to  dissemble  the  difference 


THE  BROOKLYN  BRIDGE  AS  A MONUMENT 


83 

between  their  line  and  that  of  the  roadway.  There  are 
some  shabby  and  flimsy  details  of  iron  work,  which  mar 
the  monumental  effect  of  the  great  roadway  itself,  while 
the  design  of  the  iron  stations  at  either  end  is  grossly 
illiterate,  and  discreditable  to  the  great  work.  Imita- 
tions in  cast  iron  of  stone  capitals  surmount  and  emphat- 
ically contradict  posts  profusely  studded  with  bolt-heads; 
and  other  solecisms,  alike  against  constructional  reason 
and  architectural  tradition,  are  rife  in  these  unfortunate 
edifices,  which  do  what  they  can  to  vulgarize  the  great 
structure  to  which  they  give  access. 

Vulgarity  certainly  cannot  be  charged  against  any  in- 
tegral portion  of  the  great  work  itself.  There  is  noth- 
ing frivolous  and  nothing  ostentatious  even  in  the  details 
which  we  have  noted,  and  in  which  we  have  not  been  so 
much  criticising  the  crowning  work  of  a great  engineer’s 
career  as  noting  the  spirit  of  our  age.  It  is  scarcely 
fair  to  say,  even,  as  was  said  by  an  architectural  jour- 
nal when  the  completion  of  the  bridge  was  doubtful, 
that  if  it  were  left  incomplete  its  towers  would  stand 
“ in  unnecessary  ugliness.”  Its  defects  in  design  are 
not  misdeeds,  but  shortcomings.  They  are  the  defects 
of  being  rudimentary,  of  not  being  completely  developed. 
The  anatomy  of  the  towers  and  of  the  anchorages  is  not 
brought  out  in  their  modelling.  Their  fingers,  so  to 
speak,  are  all  thumbs.  Their  impressiveness  is  inherent 
in  their  mass,  and  is  what  it  could  not  help  being.  The 
ugliest  of  great  bridges  is  undoubtedly  Stephenson’s 
Britannia  Bridge ; and  this  is  ugly,  not  because  it  is 
square  and  straight,  but  because  it  tells  nothing  of  itself. 
It  is  a mere  flat  surface,  and  almost  absolutely  inexpres- 
sive, compared,  for  example,  with  such  a piece  of  iron- 
work as  the  truss  which  carries  the  roadway  of  the  bridge 
over  Franklin  Square,  in  which  the  function  of  every 
joint  and  member  is  apparent.  But  a far  nobler  thing 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


84 

than  this  is  the  central  span  of  the  great  bridge  itself, 
its  roadway  slowly  sweeping  upward  to  meet  the  swift 
swoop  of  its  cables.  We  have  complained  of  the  lack 
of  expression  in  the  towers  of  their  anatomy,  but  this  is 
anatomy  only,  a skeletonized  structure  in  which,  as  in  a 
scientific  diagram,  we  see — even  the  layman  sees — the  in- 
terplay of  forces  represented  by  an  abstraction  of  lines. 
What  monument  of  any  architecture  can  speak  its  story 
more  clearly  and  more  forcibly  than  this  gossamer  archi- 
tecture, through  which  its  purpose,  like  “ the  spider's 
touch  ” — 

“ So  exquisitely  fine, 

Feels  at  each  thread,  and  lives  along  the  line  ” ? 

This  aerial  bow,  as  it  hangs  between  the  busy  cities, 
“ curving  on  a sky  imbrued  with  color,”  is  perfect  as  an 
organism  of  nature.  It  is  an  organism  of  nature.  There 
was  no  question  in  the  mind  of  its  designer  of  “good 
taste  ” or  of  appearance.  He  learned  the  law  that  struck 
its  curves,  the  law  that  fixed  the  strength  and  the  rela- 
tion of  its  parts,  and  he  applied  the  law.  His  work  is 
beautiful,  as  the  work  of  a ship-builder  is  unfailingly 
beautiful  in  the  forms  and  outlines  in  which  he  is  only 
studying  “ what  the  water  likes,”  without  a thought  of 
beauty,  and  as  it  is  almost  unfailingly  ugly  when  he  does 
what  he  likes  for  the  sake  of  beauty.  The  designer  of 
the  Brooklyn  Bridge  has  made  a beautiful  structure  out 
of  an  exquisite  refinement  of  utility,  in  a work  in  which 
the  lines  of  forces  constitute  the  structure.  Where  a 
more  massive  material  forbade  him  to  skeletonize  the 
structure,  and  the  lines  of  effort  and  resistance  needed 
to  be  brought  out  by  modelling,  he  has  failed  to  bring 
them  out,  and  his  structure  is  only  as  impressive  as  it 
needs  must  be.  It  has  not  helped  his  work,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  trust  his  own  sense  of  beauty, and  to  contradict  or 
to  conceal  what  he  was  doing  in  accordance  with  its  die- 


THE  BROOKLYN  BRIDGE  AS  A MONUMENT 


8.5 

tates.  As  little  would  it  have  helped  him  to  invoke  the 
aid  of  a commonplace  architect  to  plaster  his  structure 
with  triglyphs  or  to  indent  it  with  trefoils.  But  an  archi- 
tect who  pursued  his  calling  in  the  spirit  and  with  the 
skill  of  the  mediaeval  builders  of  whom  we  have  been 
speaking,  who  knew  in  his  province  the  lesson  the  engi- 
neer has  re-enforced  in  his,  that  “ Nature  can  only  be 
commanded  by  obeying  her,”  and  that  the  function  of 
an  organism,  in  art  as  in  nature,  must  determine  its 
form — such  an  architect  might  have  helped  the  designer 
of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  to  make  it  one  of  the  noblest 
monuments  of  architecture  in  the  world,  as  it  is  one  of 
the  greatest  and  most  honorable  works  of  engineering. 

o o o 


AN  AMERICAN  CATHEDRAL 


I 


HE  saying  that  ours  is  not  a cathedral-building 


1 age  is  so  obviously  true,  and  so  familiar,  that  the 
proposal  to  erect  in  New  York  the  most  important  re- 
ligious monument  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  strikes 
many,  and  perhaps  most,  cultivated  persons  with  a sense 
of  incongruity.  It  is  so  especially  true  that  this  is  not 
a cathedral-building  country  that  an  American  cathe- 
dral seems  a violation  of  the  unities  in  place  not  less 
than  in  time — an  anatopism  as  well  as  an  anachronism. 
It  is  a reflection  calculated  to  give  us  pause  that  even 
while  we  were  considering  what  should  be  the  charac- 
ter of  an  American  cathedral  in  the  city  of  New  York, 
the  Assembly  of  the  State,  being  in  possession  of  what 
was  acclaimed  at  the  time  of  its  opening  as  “ the  most 
monumental  interior  in  this  country,”  should  have  de- 
cided to  demolish  rather  than  to  restore  its  most  monu- 
mental feature,  and  should  have  been  hopelessly  vul- 
garizing it  by  substituting  for  its  stone-work  a system 
of  iron  posts  veneered  with  wood,  and  of  beams  en- 
closing panels  of  papier-mache,  without  eliciting  any 
general  or  effective  protest. 

The  very  marked  increase  of  interest  in  the  art  of 
architecture  in  this  country  within  the  last  few  years 
has  been  accompanied  by  a corresponding  advance  in 
the  practice  of  that  art,  but  it  has  scarcely  as  yet  pro- 


DESIGN  FOR  THE  PROTESTANT  EPISCOPAL  CATHEDRAL  OF  ALL-SAINTS  AT  ALBANY 


AN  AMERICAN  CATHEDRAL 


89 

ducecl  any  manifestations  that  can  be  called  monumen- 
tal. Our  monuments,  like  those  of  the  Romans,  are 
the  works  of  engineers,  and  not  of  architects.  In  fact, 
the  disproportion  in  magnitude  and  in  interest  between 
the  Roman  baths  and  aqueducts  and  the  Roman  tem- 
ples is  exaggerated  in  the  relation  between  our  works 
of  utility  and  our  works  of  art.  Our  engineers  stand 
ready  to  span  wider  openings  and  to  rear  loftier  struct- 
ures than  were  ever  bridged  or  raised  before,  provided 
anybody  can  be  convinced  that  these  unprecedented 
operations  will  “ pay.”  The  result  of  their  labors,  on 
the  aesthetic  side,  is  fairly  summed  up  in  the  remark 
of  a recent  European  visitor  that  public  works  in 
America  are  executed  without  reference  to  art. 

But,  as  Bishop  Potter  pointed  out  in  the  admirable 
letter  in  which  he  promulgated  the  project  of  an  Ameri- 
can cathedra],  this  very  prevalence  and  predominance 
of  the  utilitarian  spirit  makes  it  most  desirable  that 
there  should  be  a conspicuous  counteraction  and  an 
impressive  reminder,  in  a great  commercial  town,  that 
there  are  other  than  commercial  interests  and  other 
than  physical  needs.  A “metropolitan”  church,  in  the 
modern  sense  of  the  adjective,  dominating  the  more 
prosaic  erections  of  a city,  as  a cathedral  must  do  if 
reared  upon  the  noble  site  secured  for  the  Cathedral 
of  New  York,  is  the  conversion  into  a beacon  of  Mr. 
Ruskin’s  “ lamp  of  sacrifice.”  It  belongs  to  its  func- 
tion that  it  could  not  by  any  conceivable  possibility 
“ pay,”  and  that  it  should  be,  first  of  all,  a religious 
monument.  There  is  some  danger  that  this  may  be 
forgotten,  for  in  the  design  of  ordinary  churches,  in 
which  the  architects  who  have  been  working  at  the 
problem  presented  by  the  cathedral  are  commonly  ex- 
ercised, they  feel  at  every  turn  the  pressure  of  the 
utilitarian  spirit.  They  are  required  to  “ accommo- 


90 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


date”  a congregation,  in  most  cases  at  a minimum  of 
cost,  so  that  the  preacher  may  be  well  seen  and  heard 
of  all.  The  muses  of  acoustics,  ventilation,  and  sani- 
tary plumbing  preside  over  their  labors,  necessarily  to 
the  greater  or  less  detriment  of  architecture.  The 

O 

features  that  give  dignity  to  the  minsters  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  are  apt  to  be  obstructive  of  the  comfort  of 
the  congregation.  If  a cathedral  were  to  be  merely  or 
mainly  a huge  auditorium,  nearly  all  the  traditions  of 
ecclesiastical  architecture  would  have  to  be  sacrificed. 
Doubtless,  in  a true  cathedral  of  such  dimensions  as 
those  contemplated  for  the  Cathedral  of  New  York,  an 
ample  space  for  preaching  must  accrue.  But  a build- 
ing in  which  this  space  is  the  object  of  the  design  can 
scarcely  become  a cathedral.  Mr.  R.  L.  Stevenson, 
considering  the  apse  of  Noyon,  observes : “ I could 
never  fathom  how  any  man  dares  to  lift  up  his  voice 
in  a cathedral.  What  has  he  to  say  that  will  not  be 
an  anticlimax  ? For  though  I have  heard  a considera- 
ble variety  of  sermons,  I never  yet  heard  one  that  was 
so  expressive  as  a cathedral.  Tis  the  best  preacher 
itself,  and  preaches  day  and  night,  not  only  telling  you 
of  man’s  art  and  aspirations  in  the  past,  but  convicting 
your  own  soul  of  ardent  sympathies.”  At  all  events, 
a cathedral  is  much  more  and  other  than  a place  to 
preach  in.  If  that  alone  were  its  purpose,  it  would  be 
best  fulfilled  by  an  enclosed  and  unobstructed  space, 
extending  to  the  limits  of  the  carrying  power  of  the 
human  voice.  But  such  an  erection  would  resemble 
a mediaeval  cathedral  much  less  than  it  would  resemble 
a modern  rink. 

In  truth,  the  justification  of  a modern  and  Protestant 
cathedral  is  not  to  be  looked  for  in  its  “ usefulness.” 
The  altar,  and  not  the  pulpit,  is  the  centre  and  culmi- 
nation of  its  interior  design,  as  it  can  scarcely  be  said 


WEST  ELEVATION. 


AN  AMERICAN  CATHEDRAL 


93 


to  be  the  centre  of  “ congregational  worship.”  The  old 
cathedrals  are  most  admirably  adapted  to  be  the  thea- 
tres of  ecclesiastical  processions  and  pageants;  and  al- 
though the  Episcopal  Church  has  a more  highly  devel- 
oped ritual  than  any  other  Protestant  body,  it  does  not 
provide  for  these  on  a cathedral  scale.  The  Church  of 
England  cannot  be  said  really  to  employ  the  minsters 
it  has  inherited.  An  eminent  architect,  who  was  not 
only  an  Englishman,  but  an  “Anglo-Catholic,”  was 
compelled  to  describe  an  ancient  cathedral  in  its  mod- 
ern English  use  as  merely  “ a museum  of  antiquities, 
with  a free  sacred  concert  on  Sunday.”  Even  among 
Catholic  countries  Spain  is  almost,  if  not  quite,  alone 
in  fully  using  her  mediaeval  cathedrals  as  modern 
churches  of  the  people,  instead  of  secluding  them  as 
“historical  monuments”  from  the  ordinary  life  of  the 
nation.  In  a country  in  which  the  arts  of  reading  and 
writing  have  been  acquired  by  but  a small  fraction  of 
the  people,  the  saying  of  Victor  Hugo  cannot  have 
come  true.  The  book  has  not  destroyed  the  church, 
and  the  invention  of  printing  has  not  affected  either 
the  spirit  or  the  form  of  devotion.  The  dramatic  and 
spectacular  instinct,  so  strong  among  the  Southern  na- 
tions, and  among  the  English-speaking  peoples  perhaps 
weaker  than  anywhere  else,  has  found  natural  vent,  in 
a country  in  which  the  type  of  religion  has  remained 
mediaeval,  in  those  gorgeous  ceremonials,  addressed  to 
the  imagination  and  not  to  the  intellect,  which  really 
require  and  employ  the  stage  and  the  scenery  of  a 
mediaeval  cathedral.  Not  York  or  Salisbury,  not 
Cologne  or  Strasburg,  not  Rheims  or  Amiens,  hardly 
Milan  or  St.  Peter’s  itself,  so  fully  shows  to  our  gen- 
eration the  popular  need  which  the  mediaeval  minsters 
were  meant  to  answer  as  it  is  shown  to  travellers  on 
one  of  the  great  feasts  of  the  Church  in  Toledo  or  Sev- 


AN  AMERICAN  CATHEDRAL 


97 


ever  incomplete,  can  scarcely  be  misleading.  The  de- 
sign is,  perhaps,  the  most  suggestive  contribution  that 
has  thus  far  been  made  to  the  solution  of  the  architect- 
ural problem  of  a modern  cathedral  which  the  diocese 
of  New  York  has  undertaken.  At  all  events,  the  in- 
fluence of  it  was  more  easy  to  be  traced  in  the  designs 
for  that  work  than  the  influence  of  any  building  actu- 
ally erected  on  this  side  of  the  ocean.  In  part  this  was 
due  to  the  merits  of  the  design  itself ; in  part  to  the 
immense  vigor  and  large  picturesqueness  of  the  exe- 
cuted works  of  its  author — qualities  that  have  so  im- 
pressed themselves  upon  the  younger  generation  of 
American  architects  that  there  is  scarcely  a contem- 
porary work  of  importance  that  does  not  betray  his 
influence,  and  that  the  Provent^al  Romanesque,  in  which 
his  personal  power  of  design  was  manifested,  may  al- 
ready be  said  almost  to  have  become  the  style  of  the 
country.  It  must  be  manifest,  however,  that  it  would 
be  an  injustice  to  Mr.  Richardson’s  memory  to  take 
his  design  for  the  Albany  Cathedral  as  his  contribu- 
tion to  the  civic — one  may  almost  say  the  national — 
problem  of  the  present.  For  this  design  was  prepared 
under  rigid  limitations  of  space  and  of  cost ; and  though 
its  rejection  is  said  to  have  been  due  to  its  excess  of 
these  latter,  it  is  by  no  means  what  its  author  would 
have  devised  for  a project  in  which  there  is  no  limita- 
tion. The  Cathedral  of  All-Saints  was  to  be  rather  a 
parish  church  of  unusual  dimensions  than  a cathedral ; 
and  the  dimensions  were  still  so  restricted,  and  “seat- 
ing capacity”  still  so  important,  that  the  accommoda- 
tion of  the  congregation  became  a main  object  rather 
than  an  incident  of  the  plan  from  which  the  structure 
proceeds. 

Without  reference  to  its  scale,  the  design  for  the 
Cathedral  of  Albany  confesses  the  limitations  that  have 
13 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


98 

been  relaxed  for  the  Cathedral  of  New  York,  and  that 
render  it  unavailable  as  a direct  model.  These  appear 
mainly  in  the  interior,  but,  as  we  shall  presently  see, 
they  affect  the  exterior  design  as  well.  As  it  was  in 
the  beginnings  of  the  art  of  building,  so  now  stone 
remains  the  material  of  monumental  structures.  In 
durability  it  is  rivalled,  if  it  be  rivalled,  by  metal  alone, 
and  such  experiments  as  the  fleche  of  Rouen  and  the 
tower  of  Paris  have  not  yet  convinced  mankind  of  the 
possibility  of  a monumental  metallic  architecture.  Tim- 
ber remains  the  most  acceptable  substitute,  but  timber 
in  a cathedral  is  plainly  a substitute,  and  monumental 
architecture  admits  no  substitutes  in  the  structure  of 
a great  building.  A stone  ceiling  must  be  regarded  as 
an  indispensable  requisite  of  a true  cathedral ; and  al- 
though very  impressive  and  noble  cathedrals  still  ex- 
hibit wooden  ceilings,  they  so  far  come  short  of  fulfil- 
ling the  idea  of  a cathedral,  and  the  antiquarians  are 
pretty  well  agreed  that  the  purpose  of  the  builders  was 
to  make  their  ceilings  as  durable  as  their  walls,  and 
that  they  failed  to  carry  out  their  purpose  either  through 
lack  of  means  or  through  doubt  of  their  own  ability  to 
construct  stone  ceilings.  Considering  the  elaborate 
expositions  of  construction  in  the  true  timber  roofs  of 
the  English  Gothic,  the  boarded  ceilings  of  Ely  and 
Peterborough  were  plainly  makeshifts,  and  equally  a 
makeshift  would  be  the  wooden  ceiling,  of  trefoil  sec- 
tion, hung  to  the  timbers  of  the  roof  and  concealing 
its  construction,  which  Mr.  Richardson  designed  for  the 
Albany  Cathedral. 

We  come  here  rather  unexpectedly,  upon  the  ques- 
tion of  “ style.’  If  a vaulted  ceiling  be  so  eminently 
desirable  in  a purely  monumental  building  as  to  amount 
to  an  architectural  necessity,  it  is  equally  clear  that  the 
groined  vault — that  is  to  say,  the  vault  formed  by  the 


GROUND-PLAN. 


AN  AMERICAN  CATHEDRAL 


IOI 


intersection  of  two  or  more  vaults — is  necessary  to  the 
complete  development  of  the  vaulting  system  ; and  for 
this  the  Romance  architecture  in  which  Mr.  Richard- 
son preferred  to  work,  and  which  in  a general  way  may 
be  called  the  style  of  his  design  for  Albany,  does  not 
provide.*  The  churches  of  the  Provenqal  Romanesque 
were  vaulted,  but  with  a continuous  tunnel  vault,  sup- 
ported equally  at  all  points,  and  demanding  an  enor- 
mous thickness  of  wall,  pierced  by  few  and  small  open- 
ings, to  withstand  the  lateral  thrust  of  the  arch.  The 
introduction  of  groined  vaults  involved  a concentration 
of  the  supports  and  of  the  counterforts — that  is  to  say, 
a series  of  buttresses  in  place  of  a continuous  wall. 
The  piers  of  the  nave  and  the  exterior  buttresses,  con- 
nected by  flying  buttresses  with  the  vaults  the  thrust 
of  which  they  withstood,  thus  constituted  the  frame- 
work of  the  building,  and  the  wall  between  the  but- 
tresses became  a mere  screen,  as  finally  it  did  become 
an  avowed  screen  of  painted  glass.  The  history  of  this 
development  of  the  vault  is  the  history  of  the  transition 
from  Romanesque  to  Gothic  architecture.  The  mediae- 
val architects  carried  this  development  to  its  extreme, 
leaving  at  last,  as  in  the  Sainte  Chapelle,  no  wall  at  all, 
and  their  work  has  been  described  as  an  attempt  to 
“ etherealize  matter.”  It  may  very  well  be  doubted 
whether  the  architect  of  a modern  cathedral  should  not 
stop  short  of  the  result  they  reached,  and  strive  for  a 
simpler  and  more  robust  treatment  than  theirs  — in 
other  words,  for  a treatment  more  Romanesque.  But 
if  we  assume  that  the  cathedral  shall  be  ceiled  in  mate- 


* The  alternative  of  a domical  construction  is  not  here  considered, 
though  it  was  adopted  in  that  one  of  the  designs  for  the  Cathedral  of 
New  York  that  was  chosen  for  further  development.  The  competitive 
design  could  not  be  accepted  as  a solution  of  the  problem,  since  the 
domed  interior  was  masked,  instead  of  being  expressed,  by  the  exterior. 


102 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


rial  as  durable  and  monumental  as  that  of  its  walls,  we 
cannot  reject  the  labors  of  the  generations  of  artistic 
builders  who  concerned  themselves  with  that  problem, 
and  attained  so  brilliant  a solution  of  it.  To  take  the 
instance  before  us,  the  clere-story  of  the  nave  and  of 
the  choir  is  in  effect  a continuous  arcade  of  narrow- 
pointed  lancets.  It  needs  a second  glance  to  note  that 
they  are  grouped  in  pairs,  and  that  the  piers  between 
the  pairs  are  slightly  broader  than  the  piers  dividing 
the  openings  of  each  pair.  The  slight  increase  in  mass 
quite  suffices  to  account  in  the  interior  for  the  principal 
roof  timber  which  rests  upon  it,  and,  with  the  vaulting- 
shaft,  to  continue  upward  the  line  of  the  nave-pier.  But 
if  the  flying  buttress,  necessary  to  transfer  the  thrust  of 
the  vault,  were  built  at  this  point,  the  arcade  of  the  ex- 
terior would  be  effectually  interrupted,  and  the  space 
between  the  buttresses  set  off  into  a single  bay,  as  in 
the  wall  of  the  aisle  below,  which  does,  in  fact,  repre- 
sent a vault.  In  that  case  a single  large  opening  would 
naturally  take  the  place  of  the  pair  of  lancets,  still  fur- 
ther emphasizing  the  division  into  bays,  and  the  side 
of  the  nave  would  at  once  bear  a much  stronger  resem- 
blance than  it  now  bears  to  the  accepted  type  of  a 
cathedral.  In  the  choir  a like  result  would  follow,  and 
it  would  be  emphasized  at  the  east  end.  The  circle  of 
apsidal  chapels  is  one  of  the  most  striking  and  most 
successful  features  of  Mr.  Richardson’s  design.  As  will 
be  seen  from  the  ground-plan,  however,  these  are  fea- 
tures that  do  not  proceed  from  the  interior  arrange- 
ment so  much  as  features  to  which  the  interior  arrange- 
ment  is  conformed.  Even  when  viewed  from  the  outside 
the  undeniable  power  and  picturesqueness  of  the  group 
is  marred  by  the  suggestion  of  something  forced  and 
arbitrary  in  their  arrangement.  There  are  precedents 
in  Romanesque  architecture  for  such  a disposition, 


AN  AMERICAN  CATHEDRAL 


103 


among  them  “the  great  triapsal  swing”  of  the  twelfth- 
century  churches  of  Cologne,  though  evidently  the  ex- 
ample that  inspired  Mr.  Richardson  was  the  chevet  of 
Clermont  in  Auvergne,  which  he  has  followed  even  to 
the  introduction  of  the  mosaic  above  the  springing  of 
the  arches.  All  these,  however,  are  much  simpler  than 
the  apse  designed  for  Albany.  What  Mr.  Richardson 
doubtless  had  in  mind  was  to  reproduce  the  effect  of 
the  ring  of  chapels  that  forms  the  chevet  of  a French 
Gothic  cathedral,  without  reproducing  Gothic  forms. 
But  the  flying  buttresses  that  radiate  from  the  apse  of 
a French  Gothic  cathedral  determine  and  bound  the 
chapels  that  fill  the  spaces  between  them,  and,  by  mak- 
ing these  appear  integral  parts  of  the  main  structure, 
save  them  from  the  look  they  would  otherwise  have  of 
extraneous  appendages. 


Ill 

It  seems,  then,  that  the  question  of  style  in  a modern 
cathedral  is  not  to  be  determined  according  to  the  in- 
dividual preference  of  a designer  for  round  arches  or 
pointed,  for  openings  traceried  or  plain.  If  the  prob- 
lem he  is  working  at  has  been  successfully  solved  here- 
tofore, he  is  not  at  liberty  to  ignore  this  solution  be- 
cause it  falls  without  the  limits  of  the  historical  period 
he  has  proposed  to  himself,  and  to  content  himself  with 
an  incomplete  solution.  Of  course  this  remark  does 
not  apply  as  a criticism  to  Mr.  Richardson’s  design  for 
Albany,  prepared  under  limitations  that  he  was  com- 
pelled to  observe,  but  which  the  competitors  for  the 
Cathedral  of  New  York  were  at  liberty  to  disregard. 
Whether  he  was  right  in  so  far  sacrificing  the  monu- 
mental  character  of  his  interior  to  the  monumental 
features  of  his  exterior,  is  not  a practical  question  for 


104 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


designers  of  whom  no  sacrifice  in  either  direction  is 
demanded.  There  are  very  noble  examples  of  vaulted 
architecture  in  the  Romanesque  period — examples  which 
it  will  be  glory  enough  for  the  architect  of  the  Cathe- 
dral of  New  York  if  he  succeeds  in  equalling  without 
slavishly  imitating.  But  in  all  these  there  is  a lack  of 
that  complete  correspondence  between  the  interior  and 
the  exterior  structure  that  makes  the  organic  unity  of 
a true  cathedral,  and  that  was  attained  for  the  first  time 
in  the  thirteenth  century,  after  a series  of  tentative  ex- 
periments embodied  in  these  very  Romanesque  build- 
ings.* It  is  by  no  means  necessary  for  an  architect  to 
revert  to  these  experiments  because  he  does  not  sym- 
pathize with  the  expression  of  strained  intensity  and 
“otherworldliness”  which  the  Gothic  architects  attained, 
and  prefers  the  more  robust,  more  massive,  more  mun- 
dane aspect  of  the  Romanesque  monuments  that  pre- 
ceded the  great  cathedrals.  The  modelling  of  these 
cathedrals  is  carried  so  far  that  nothing  is  left  un- 
modelled ; there  are  no  longer  any  surfaces  ; the  whole 
structure  is  anatomized;  and  the  modern  architect, 
even  while  he  stands  astonished  at  the  result  of  this 
unsparing  analysis,  may  yet  say,  “ It  were  to  consider 
too  curiously  to  consider  so.”  But  it  is  not  by  refusing 
the  aid  these  wonderful  structures  offer  him  that  he 
can  advance  upon  or  equal  them.  The  development 
of  a cathedral  requires,  indeed,  a system  of  piers  and 
vaults  and  flying  arches  and  weighted  buttresses.  But 
these  need  not  be  the  same  features  in  modelling,  in 
detail,  or  in  expression  that  we  know  in  historical  ex- 
amples. Instances  are  not  wanting  to  show  that  they 

* See  Mr.  Charles  Herbert  Moore’s  excellent  “ Development  and 
Character  of  Gothic  Architecture,”  published  since  this  paper  was 
written ; a work  which  no  student  of  Gothic  or  of  cathedral-building 
can  afford  not  to  read. 


AN  AMERICAN  CATHEDRAL 


107 


may  be  massed  with  the  stalwart  simplicity  of  the  Ro- 
manesque builders  as  well  as  drawn  into  the  complex 
and  bewildering  forms  they  assumed  in  the  later  Gothic. 
In  his  design  for  Albany,  Mr.  Richardson  has  shown 
very  clearly  that  an  artist,  whose  individuality  is  strong 
enough,  can  put  its  stamp  upon  whatever  he  adopts. 
The  common  distinction  that  Romanesque  is  a round- 
arched  and  Gothic  a pointed  style,  is  shown  to  be  base- 
less in  an  unmistakably  Romanesque  church  in  which 
all  the  openings  of  the  clere-story  are  pointed  lancets, 
in  which  the  pointed  openings  elsewhere  far  outnum- 
ber the  round  arches,  and  in  which  the  architect  has 
introduced  tracery,  sparingly  but  effectively,  without  at 
all  marring  the  unity  of  the  structure.  Nay,  the  church 
owes  the  suggestion  of  some  of  its  noblest  features  to 
works  that  did  not  exist  until  the  period  classified  as 
Romanesque  had  closed.  A modern  architect  forfeits 
his  birthright  who  does  not  use  all  that  the  past  has  to 
offer  him  of  help  ; and  his  originality  is  impeached  only 
if  he  does  not  overrule  to  his  own  purposes  what  he 
adopts,  if  he  copies  instead  of  using.  The  west  front 
of  Albany,  for  example,  is  the  west  front  of  Notre  Dame 
of  Paris,  with  differences,  as  marked  as  the  resem- 
blances, which  convert  it  into  a new  creation.  The 
three  entrances,  burrowed  through  the  thickness  of  the 
wall  and  not  projected  from  the  face,  are  repeated,  but 
with  a strong  and  decorated  belt  course  at  their  spring- 
ing. The  buttresses,  bringing  down  the  line  of  the 
towers  at  Paris  and  dividing  the  front  into  three,  are 
omitted,  and  a balustrade  in  relief  takes  the  place  of 
the  line  of  statues.  The  flanking  towers  thus  rise  from 
a continuous  base,  and  a tall  mock-arcade  marks  their 
lines  in  the  next  stage  and  emphasizes  the  flanking 
wall,  which  in  the  mediaeval  example  is  pierced  with 
a double  arch  on  each  side  of  the  rose-window,  and  the 


io8 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


central  wall  is  here  recessed  to  serve  the  same  purpose 
of  detaching  the  towers  which  in  Notre  Dame  is  an- 
swered by  the  buttresses,  while  above  the  rose-window 
another  balustrade  corresponds  to  the  tall  traceried 
arcade,  and  the  lancets  of  the  belfry  stage,  double  in 
Notre  Dame,  are  here  grouped  in  threes.  Except  the 
buttresses,  every  feature  of  the  old  front  has  its  coun- 
terpart, but  by  the  emphasis  given  to  the  horizontal 
lines,  and  the  diminution  of  the  vertical  lines,  in  one 
instance  amounting  to  an  effacement,  the  whole  aspect 
of  the  faqade  is  transformed.  This  is  an  admirable 
example  of  the  manner  in  which  a modern  architect 
may  employ  his  inheritance.  Another,  not  less  admi- 
rable, is  the  adoption  in  the  transept  entrance  of  the 
main  and  most  characteristic  feature  of  the  famous 
“ triple  northern  porch  ” of  Chartres,  the  interpolation 
of  narrow  arches  between  the  main  portals  and  below 
the  springing  of  their  arches.  This  is  a still  more 
signal  instance  of  what  we  have  been  saying  of  the 
power  of  changing  the  expression  of  a feature  while 
retaining  its  substance,  for  the  northern  porch  of  Char- 
tres is  one  of  the  loveliest  fantasies  of  a late  and  highly 
ornate  Gothic,  and  it  is  here  translated  back  into  the 
severer  Romanesque,  as  all  the  structural  features  of  a 
fully  developed  cathedral  might  be. 

IV 

But  it  is  not  in  its  details  nor  in  its  features,  fine  as 
many  of  these  are,  that  Mr.  Richardson’s  design  for 
Albany  offers  the  most  inspiring  suggestions  and  the 
safest  model.  It  is  in  the  sense  that  pervades  it  of  the 
all-importance  of  the  relation  of  its  masses,  and  in  the 
mastery  it  shows  of  architectural  composition.  It  was 
lone  aeo  noted  as  a mark  of  an  artistic  work  of  archi- 

o o 


AN  AMERICAN  CATHEDRAL 


109 


tecture  that  it  “ pyramidizes,”  and  this  implies  a single 
culminating  feature  to  which  the  parts  converge  and 
rise.  In  the  work  which  first  fixed  Mr.  Richardson’s 
rank  among  American  architects — -Trinity  Church  in 
Boston — the  most  striking  merit  of  the  design  is  the 
manner  in  which  the  parts  are  subordinated  to  the 
noble  and  massive  central  tower.  In  his  design  for 
Albany  the  same  subordination  is  carried  through  more 
gradations,  and  it  is  both  more  subtle  and  more  suc- 
cessful. The  outer  aisles  of  the  nave  are  secluded  alto- 
gether from  the  interior,  and  set  off  in  the  “cloisters” 
or  loggie  that  are  among  the  most  effective  features  of 
the  building,  and  among  the  happiest  suggestions  its 
designer  derived  from  the  study  of  Spanish  architect- 
ure. The  roofs  of  these  recede  to  the  walls  of  the  aisle 
proper,  the  roofs  of  which  are  conspicuous,  so  that  the 
clere-story  is  seen  above  a succession  of  terraces.  At 
the  east  end  the  circle  of  chapels  and  the  aisle  roofs 
and  the  sharp  slope  of  the  main  roof  rise  in  receding 
masses  that  converge  towards  the  great  central  tower, 
which  from  the  side  broadens  down  upon  the  flanking 
towers  of  the  transept.  The  relation  between  the  west- 
ern and  the  central  towers  is  far  happier  than  in  the 
earlier  example,  and  the  central  tower  itself  shows  as 
great  an  advance  upon  the  tower  of  Trinity  as  does 
that  upon  the  tower  of  Salamanca,  from  which  the  sug- 
gestion of  it  was  derived.  But  the  western  front  is 
perhaps  the  most  brilliantly  successful  illustration  of 
its  author’s  power.  We  have  seen  that  Mr.  Richard- 
son refused  the  aid  of  the  buttresses,  which  with  their 
successive  offsets  narrow  the  fronts  of  Gothic  cathe- 
drals as  they  rise,  but  he  replaced  them  with  a series 
of  devices  that  answer  the  same  purpose  almost  as  effec- 
tively. The  flanking  towers  are  themselves  flanked  at 
the  base  by  low  polygonal  hooded  structures  that  are 


I IO 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


succeeded  by  attached  turrets  reaching  to  the  belfry 
stage.  The  roofs  of  the  western  towers  themselves 
next  converge  towards  the  looming  bulk  of  the  central 
feature,  to  which  they  serve  as  pinnacles.  Surely  in  all 
the  achievements  of  architectural  amity  through  variety 
that  the  Middle  Ages  have  bequeathed  to  us,  there  are 
few  that  in  nobleness  and  dignity  surpass  the  effect  that 
is  promised  by  Mr.  Richardson’s  design  for  the  west 
front  of  Albany,  and  in  modern  work  where  shall  we 
look  for  a parallel. 

This  very  central  tower  may  serve  as  a reminder  of 
the  point  in  which  a modern  cathedral  may  mark  an 
architectural  advance  upon  the  mediaeval  art  which,  in 
most  respects,  its  builders  may  be  well  content  if  they 
can  equal.  For  the  culminating  feature  of  the  exterior 
should  be  the  culminating  feature  of  the  interior  also, 
and  it  was  this  need  that  the  mediaeval  architects  left 
unanswered.  They  recognized  it,  and  in  the  cimborio 
of  the  Spanish  cathedral,  and  in  such  experiments  as 
the  octagon  of  Ely,  they  made  the  beginnings  of  an 
answer,  but  these  are  no  more  to  be  accepted  as  com- 
plete than  the  Romanesque  system  of  vaulting,  which 
the  Gothic  architects  developed  to  its  perfection.  The 
fleche  of  a French  cathedral  emphasizes  rather  than 
supplies  the  need  of  such  a culmination.  The  central 
towers  of  such  English  cathedrals  as  possess  them  are 
purely  exterior  ornaments,  as  unrelated  to  the  body  of 
the  church  as  its  western  towers.  In  Mr.  Richardson’s 
design  the  tall  and  narrow  dome  at  the  crossing  would 
not  be  apprehensible  as  a crowning  feature,  except  from 
a point  of  view  almost  directly  beneath  it,  while  its  ex- 
ternal form  does  not  intimate  its  interior  function.  It 
was  a true  feeling  that  led  the  architects  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance  to  embrace  the  aisles  as  well  as  the  nave 
under  the  central  dome,  though  they  clothed  their  con- 


AN  AMERICAN  CATHEDRAL 


I I I 


struction  in  untrue  forms.  To  develop  true  forms  for 
it  is  the  one  advance  upon  past  ecclesiastical  architect- 
ure which  seems  to  be  possible,  and  to  develop  these 
may  be  said  to  be  the  central  problem  of  design  in  an 
American  cathedral. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 
I.— CHICAGO 

begin  with  a paradox,  the  feature 
of  Chicago  is  its  featurelessness. 
There  is  scarcely  any  capital,  ancient 
or  modern,  to  which  the  site  supplies 
so  little  of  a visible  reason  of  being. 
The  prairie  and  the  lake  meet  at 
a level,  a liquid  plain  and  a plain  of 
mud  that  cannot  properly  be  called 
solid,  with  nothing  but  the  change 
of  material  to  break  the  expanse. 
Indeed,  when  there  is  a breeze,  the 
surface  of  Lake  Michigan  would  be 
distinctly  more  diversified  than  that 
of  the  adjoining  land,  but  for  the 
handiwork  of  man.  In  point  of  fact, 
Chicago  is  of  course  explained  by 
the  confluence  here  of  the  two  branch- 
es of  the  Chicago  River.  These  have 
determined  the  site,  the  plan,  and  the  building  of  the 
town,  but  one  can  scarcely  describe  as  natural  features 
the  two  sinuous  ditches  that  drain  the  prairie  into  the 
lake,  apparently  in  defiance  of  the  law  that  water  runs, 
and  even  oozes,  down  hill.  Streams,  however  narrow  and 
sluggish  they  may  be,  so  they  be  themselves  available 
for  traffic,  operate  an  obstruction  to  traffic  by  land  ; and  it 
is  the  fact  that  for  some  distance  from  the  junction  the 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


”3 

south  fork  of  the  river  flows  parallel  with  the  shore  of 
the  lake,  and  within  a half-mile  of  it,  which  establishes  in 
this  enclosure  the  commercial  centre  of  Chicago.  Even 
the  slight  obstacle  interposed  to  traffic  by  the  confluent 
streams,  bridged  and  tunnelled  as  they  are,  has  sufficed 
greatly  to  raise  the  cost  of  land  within  this  area,  in  com- 
parison with  that  outside,  and  to  compel  here  the  erec- 
tion of  the  towering  structures  that  are  the  most  charac- 
teristic and  the  most  impressive  monuments  of  the  town. 

In  character  and  impressiveness  these  by  no  means 
disappoint  the  stranger’s  expectations,  but  in  number 
and  extent  they  do,  rather.  For  what  one  expects  of 
Chicago,  before  anything  else,  is  modernness.  In  most 
things  one’s  expectations  are  fully  realized.  It  is  the 
most  contemporaneous  of  capitals,  and  in  the  appear- 
ance of  its  people  and  their  talk  in  the  streets  and  in 
the  clubs  and  in  the  newspapers  it  fairly  palpitates  with 
“ actuality.”  Nevertheless,  the  general  aspect  of  the 
business  quarter  is  distinctly  old-fashioned,  and  this 
even  to  the  effete  Oriental  from  New  York  or  Boston. 
The  elevator  is  nearly  a quarter  of  a century  old,  and 
the  first  specimens  of  “elevator  architecture,”  the  West- 
ern Union  and  the  “ Tribune  ” buildings  in  New  York,  are 
very  nearly  coeval  with  the  great  fire  in  Chicago.  One 
would  have  supposed  that  the  rebuilders  of  Chicago 
would  have  seized  upon  this  hint  with  avidity,  and  that 
its  compressed  commercial  quarter  would  have  made 
up  in  altitude  what  it  lacked  in  area.  In  fact,  not  only 
are  the  great  modern  office  buildings  still  exceptional 
in  the  most  costly  and  most  crowded  district,  but  it  is 
astonishing  to  hear  that  the  oldest  of  them  is  scarcely 
more  than  seven  years  of  age.  “ Men’s  deeds  are  after 
as  they  have  been  accustomed  ” — and  the  first  impulse 
of  the  burnt-out  merchants  of  Chicaqo  was  not  to  seize 
the  opportunity  the  clean  sweep  of  the  fire  had  given 

15 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


I 14 

them  to  improve  their  warehouses  and  office  buildings, 
but  to  provide  themselves  straightway  with  places  in 
which  they  could  find  shelter  and  do  business.  The 
consequence  was  that  the  new  buildings  of  the  burnt 
district  were  planned  and  designed,  as  well  as  built,  with 
the  utmost  possible  speed,  and  the  rebuilding  was  for 
the  most  part  done  by  the  same  architects  who  had 
built  the  old  Chicago,  and  who  took  even  less  thought 
the  second  time  than  they  had  taken  the  first,  by  reason 
of  the  greater  pressure  upon  them.  The  American 
commercial  Renaissance,  commonly  expressed  in  cast- 
iron,  was  in  its  full  efflorescence  just  before  the  fire. 
The  material  was  discredited  by  that  calamity,  but  un- 
happily not  the  forms  it  had  taken,  and  in  Chicago  we 
may  see,  what  is  scarcely  to  be  seen  anywhere  else  in 
the  world,  fronts  in  cast-iron,  themselves  imitated  from 
lithic  architecture,  again  imitated  in  masonry,  with  the 
modifications  reproduced  that  had  been  made  necessary 
by  the  use  of  the  less  trustworthy  material.  This  igno- 
ble process  is  facilitated  by  the  material  at  hand,  a lime- 
stone of  which  slabs  can  be  had  in  sizes  that  simulate 
exactly  the  castings  from  which  the  treatment  of  them 
is  derived.  After  the  exposure  of  a few  months  to  the 
bituminous  fumes  it  is  really  impossible  to  tell  one  of 
these  reproductions  from  the  original,  which  very  likely 
adjoins  it.  Masonry  and  metal  alike  appear  to  have 
come  from  a foundry,  rather  than  from  a quarry,  and 
to  have  been  moulded  according  to  the  stock  patterns 
of  some  architectural  iron-works.  The  lifelessness  and 
thoughtlessness  of  the  iron-founders’  work  predominate 
in  the  streets  devoted  to  the  retail  trade,  and  the  pict- 
uresque tourist  in  Chicago  is  thus  compelled  to  traverse 
many  miles  of  street  fronts  quite  as  dismal  and  as  mo- 
notonous as  the  commercial  architecture  of  any  other 
modern  town. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


1 15 

There  is  a compensation  for  this  in  what  at  first  sight 
seems  to  be  one  of  its  aggravations.  The  buildings 
which  wear  these  stereotyped  street  fronts  are  much 
lower  and  less  capacious  than  the  increasing  exigencies 
of  business  require,  and  than  the  introduction  of  the 
elevator  makes  possible,  and  they  could  not  be  other 
than  cheap  and  flimsy  in  construction.  Naturally  the 
rebuilders  of  Chicago  talked  a great  deal  about  “ abso- 
lutely fire-proof”  construction,  but  as  naturally  they  did 
very  little  of  it.  The  necessity  for  immediate  accom- 
modation, at  a minimum  of  cost,  was  overwhelming, 
and  cheap  and  hasty  construction  cannot  be  fire-proof 
construction.  Accordingly,  the  majority  of  the  com- 
mercial buildings  now  standing  in  Chicago  are  as  really 
provisional  and  temporary  as  the  tents  and  shanties, 
pitched  almost  on  the  embers  of  the  fire,  which  they 
succeeded.  The  time  being  now  ripe  for  replacing  them 
by  structures  more  capacious  and  durable,  it  is  a mat- 
ter for  congratulation  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  exist- 
ing buildings  of  such  practical  or  architectural  value  as 
to  make  anybody  regret  or  obstruct  the  substitution. 

Even  if  the  old-fashioned  architects  who  rebuilt  Chi- 
cago had  been  anxious  to  reconstruct  it  according  to 
the  best  and  newest  lights,  it  would  have  been  quite  out 
of  their  power  to  do  so  unaided.  The  erection  of  a 
twelve-story  building  anywhere  involves  an  amount  of 
mechanical  consideration  and  a degree  of  engineering 
skill  that  are  quite  beyond  the  practitioners  of  the  Amer- 
ican metallic  Renaissance.  In  Chicago  the  problem  is 
more  complicated  than  elsewhere,  because  these  tower- 
ing and  massive  structures  ultimately  rest  upon  a quag- 
mire that  is  not  less  but  more  untrustworthy  the  deeper 
one  digs.  The  distribution  of  the  weight  by  carrying 
the  foundations  down  to  a trustworthy  bottom,  and 
increasing  the  area  of  the  supporting  piers  as  they  de- 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


I 16 

scend,  is  not  practicable  here,  nor,  for  the  same  reason, 
can  it  be  done  by  piling.  It  is  managed,  in  the  heavi- 
est buildings,  by  floating  them  upon  a raft  of  concrete 
and  railroad  iron,  spread  a few  feet  below  the  surface, 
so  that  there  are  no  cellars  in  the  business  quarter,  and 
the  subterranean  activities  that  are  so  striking:  in  the 
elevator  buildings  of  New  York  are  quite  unknown.  If 
the  architects  of  the  old  Chicago,  to  whom  their  former 
clients  naturally  applied  to  rear  the  phoenix  of  the  new, 
had  been  seized  with  the  ambition  of  building  Babels, 
they  would  doubtless  have  made  as  wild  work  practi- 
cally as  they  certainly  would  have  made  artistically  in 
the  confusion  of  architectural  tongues  that  would  have 
fallen  upon  them.  It  is  in  every  point  of  view  fortu- 
nate that  the  modernization  of  the  town  was  reserved 
for  the  better-trained  designers  of  a younger  genera- 
tion. 

It  might  be  expected  that  the  architecture  of  Chicago 
would  be  severely  utilitarian  in  purpose  if  not  in  design, 
and  this  is  the  case.  The  city  may  be  said  to  consist 
of  places  of  business  and  places  of  residence.  There 
are  no  churches,  for  example,  that  fairly  represent  the 
skill  of  the  architects.  The  best  of  them  are  scarcely 
worthy  of  illustration  or  discussion  here,  while  the  worst 
of  them  might  suitably  illustrate  the  work  projected  by 
a ribald  wit  on  “ The  Comic  Aspects  of  Christianity.” 
Among  other  things,  it  follows  from  this  deficiency  that 
Chicago  lacks  almost  altogether,  in  any  general  view 
that  can  be  had  of  it,  the  variety  and  animation  that 
are  imparted  to  the  sky  line  of  a town  seen  from  the 
water,  or  from  an  eminence,  by  a “ tiara  of  proud  tow- 
ers,” even  when  these  are  not  specially  attractive  in 
outline  or  in  detail,  nor  especially  fortunate  in  their 
grouping.  There  is  nothing,  for  example,  in  the  aspect 
of  Chicago  from  the  lake,  or  from  any  attainable  point 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


II  7 


of  view,  that  is  comparable  to  the  sky-line  of  the  Back 
Bay  of  Boston,  as  seen  from  the  Cambridge  bridge,  or 
of  lower  New  York  from  either  river.  The  towering 
buildings  are  almost  wholly  flat-roofed,  and  their  stark, 
rectangular  outlines  cannot  take  on  picturesqueness, 
even  under  the  friendly  drapery  of  the  smoke  that  over- 
hangs the  commercial  quarter  during  six  days  of  the 
week.  The  architect  of  the  Dearborn  Station  was  very 
happily  inspired  when  he  relieved  the  prevailing  mo- 
notony with  the  quaint  and  striking  clock-tower  that 
adjoins  that  structure. 

The  secular  public  buildings  of  Chicago  are  much 
more  noteworthy  than  the  churches,  but  upon  the  whole 
they  bear  scarcely  so  large  a relation  to  the  mass  of 
private  building  as  one  would  expect  from  the  wealth 
and  the  public  spirit  of  the  town,  and  with  one  or  two 
very  noteworthy  exceptions,  recent  as  many  of  them 
are,  they  were  built  too  early.  The  most  discussed  of 
them  is  the  city  and  county  building,  and  this  has  been 
discussed  for  reasons  quite  alien  to  its  architecture,  the 
halves  of  what  was  originally  a single  design  having 
been  assigned  to  different  architects.  The  original 
design  has  been  followed  in  the  main,  and  the  result  is 
an  edifice  that  certainly  makes  a distinctive  impression. 
A building,  completely  detached,  340  feet  by  2S0  in 
area,  and  considerably  over  100  feet  high,  can  scarcely 
fail  to  make  an  impression  by  dint  of  mere  magnitude, 
but  there  is  rather  more  than  that  in  the  city  and  county 
building.  The  parts  are  few  and  large,  but  five  stories 
appearing,  the  masonry  is  massive,  and  the  projecting 
and  pedimented  porticoes  are  on  an  ample  scale.  These 
things  give  the  building  a certain  effect  of  sumptuosity 
and  swagger  that  ally  it  rather  to  the  Parisian  than  to 
the  Peorian  Renaissance.  The  effect  is  marred  by  cer- 
tain drawbacks  of  detail,  and  by  one  that  is  scarcely  of 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


I 16 

scend,  is  not  practicable  here,  nor,  for  the  same  reason, 
can  it  be  done  by  piling.  It  is  managed,  in  the  heavi- 
est buildings,  by  boating  them  upon  a raft  of  concrete 
and  railroad  iron,  spread  a few  feet  below  the  surface, 
so  that  there  are  no  cellars  in  the  business  quarter,  and 
the  subterranean  activities  that  are  so  striking  in  the 
elevator  buildings  of  New  York  are  quite  unknown.  If 
the  architects  of  the  old  Chicago,  to  whom  their  former 
clients  naturally  applied  to  rear  the  phoenix  of  the  new, 
had  been  seized  with  the  ambition  of  building  Babels, 
they  would  doubtless  have  made  as  wild  work  practi- 
cally as  they  certainly  would  have  made  artistically  in 
the  confusion  of  architectural  tongues  that  would  have 
fallen  upon  them.  It  is  in  every  point  of  view  fortu- 
nate that  the  modernization  of  the  town  was  reserved 
for  the  better-trained  designers  of  a younger  genera- 
tion. 

It  might  be  expected  that  the  architecture  of  Chicago 
would  be  severely  utilitarian  in  purpose  if  not  in  design, 
and  this  is  the  case.  The  city  may  be  said  to  consist 
of  places  of  business  and  places  of  residence.  There 
are  no  churches,  for  example,  that  fairly  represent  the 
skill  of  the  architects.  The  best  of  them  are  scarcely 
worthy  of  illustration  or  discussion  here,  while  the  worst 
of  them  might  suitably  illustrate  the  work  projected  by 
a ribald  wit  on  “ The  Comic  Aspects  of  Christianity.” 
Among  other  things,  it  follows  from  this  deficiency  that 
Chicago  lacks  almost  altogether,  in  any  general  view 
that  can  be  had  of  it,  the  variety  and  animation  that 
are  imparted  to  the  sky  line  of  a town  seen  from  the 
water,  or  from  an  eminence,  by  a “ tiara  of  proud  tow- 
ers,” even  when  these  are  not  specially  attractive  in 
outline  or  in  detail,  nor  especially  fortunate  in  their 
grouping.  There  is  nothing,  for  example,  in  the  aspect 
of  Chicago  from  the  lake,  or  from  any  attainable  point 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


II  7 

of  view,  that  is  comparable  to  the  sky-line  of  the  Back 
Bay  of  Boston,  as  seen  from  the  Cambridge  bridge,  or 
of  lower  New  York  from  either  river.  The  towering 
buildings  are  almost  wholly  flat-roofed,  and  their  stark, 
rectangular  outlines  cannot  take  on  picturesqueness, 
even  under  the  friendly  drapery  of  the  smoke  that  over- 
hangs the  commercial  quarter  during  six  days  of  the 
week.  The  architect  of  the  Dearborn  Station  was  very 
happily  inspired  when  he  relieved  the  prevailing  mo- 
notony with  the  quaint  and  striking  clock-tower  that 
adjoins  that  structure. 

The  secular  public  buildings  of  Chicago  are  much 
more  noteworthy  than  the  churches,  but  upon  the  whole 
they  bear  scarcely  so  large  a relation  to  the  mass  of 
private  building  as  one  would  expect  from  the  wealth 
and  the  public  spirit  of  the  town,  and  with  one  or  two 
very  noteworthy  exceptions,  recent  as  many  of  them 
are,  they  were  built  too  early.  The  most  discussed  of 
them  is  the  city  and  county  building,  and  this  has  been 
discussed  for  reasons  quite  alien  to  its  architecture,  the 
halves  of  what  was  originally  a single  design  having 
been  assigned  to  different  architects.  The  original 
design  has  been  followed  in  the  main,  and  the  result  is 
an  edifice  that  certainly  makes  a distinctive  impression. 
A building,  completely  detached,  340  feet  by  2S0  in 
area,  and  considerably  over  100  feet  high,  can  scarcely 
fail  to  make  an  impression  by  dint  of  mere  magnitude, 
but  there  is  rather  more  than  that  in  the  city  and  county 
building.  The  parts  are  few  and  large,  but  five  stories 
appearing,  the  masonry  is  massive,  and  the  projecting 
and  pedimented  porticoes  are  on  an  ample  scale.  These 
things  give  the  building  a certain  effect  of  sumptuosity 
and  swagger  that  ally  it  rather  to  the  Parisian  than  to 
the  Peorian  Renaissance.  The  effect  is  marred  by  cer- 
tain drawbacks  of  detail,  and  by  one  that  is  scarcely  of 


1 18 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


FROM  THE  CITY  AND  COUNTY  BUILDING. 
J.  W.  Egan  and  J.  R.  Mullett,  Architects. 


detail,  the  extreme  meanness  and  baldness  of  the  attic, 
in  which,  for  the  only  time  in  the  building,  the  openings 
seem  to  be  arranged  with  some  reference  to  their  uses, 
and  in  which  accordingly  they  have  a painfully  pinched 
and  huddled  appearance.  In  the  decorative  detail  there 
is  apparent  a divergency  of  views  between  the  two  archi- 
tects appointed  to  carry  out  the  divided  halves  of  the 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE  lYg 

united  design.  The  municipal  designer — or  possibly  it 
is  the  county  gentleman — has  been  content  to  stand 
upon  the  ancient  ways,  and  to  introduce  no  detail  for 
which  he  has  not  found  Ludovican  precedent,  while  his 
rival  is  of  a more  aspiring  mind,  and  has  endeavored  to 
carry  out  the  precepts  of  the  late  Thomas  Jefferson,  by 
classicizing  things  modern.  His  excursions  are  not 
very  daring,  and  consist  mainly  in  such  substitutions  as 
that  of  an  Indian's  head  for  the  antique  mask,  in  a 
frieze  of  conventionalized  American  foliage.  He  has 
attained  what  must  be  in  such  an  attempt  the  gratifying 
success  of  converting  his  modern  material  to  a result  as 
dull  and  lifeless  and  uninteresting  as  his  prototype.  It 
does  not,  however,  impair  the  grandiosity  of  the  general 
effect.  This  is  impaired,  not  merely  by  the  poverty  of 
design  already  noted  in  the  attic,  but  also  by  the  nig- 
gardliness shown  in  dividing  the  polished  granite  col- 
umn of  the  porticoes  into  several  drums,  though  mono- 
liths are  plainly  indicated  by  their  dimensions,  and  by 
the  general  scale  of  the  masonry.  The  small  economy 
is  the  more  injurious,  because  a noble  regardlessness  of 
expense  is  of  the  essence  of  the  architecture,  and  an 
integral  part  of  its  effectiveness.  The  most  monumental 
feature  of  the  projected  building  has  never  been  sup- 
plied— a huge  arch  in  the  centre  of  each  of  the  shorter 
fronts,  giving  access  to  the  central  court,  and  marking 
the  division  between  the  property  of  the  city  and  of  the 
county.  It  is  possible  that  the  failure  to  finish  this 
arch  has  proceeded  from  the  political  conflict  that  has 
left  its  scars  upon  the  building  elsewhere.  There  is  an 
obvious  practical  difficulty  in  intrusting  the  two  halves 
of  an  arch  to  rival  architects  and  rival  contractors. 
However  that  may  be,  the  arch  is  unbuilt,  and  the  en- 
trance to  the  central  court  is  a mere  rift  in  the  wall. 
The  practical  townspeople  have  seized  the  opportunity 


I 20 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


thus  presented  by  the  unoccupied  space  of  free  quarters 
for  the  all-pervading  buggy.  With  a contempt  for  the 
constituted  authorities  that  it  must  be  owned  the  con- 
stituted authorities  have  gone  far  to  justify,  they  tether 
their  horses  in  the  shadow  of  their  chief  civic  monu- 
ment, like  so  many  Arabs  under  the  pillars  of  Palmyra 
or  Persepolis,  and  heighten  the  impression  of  being  the 
relic  of  an  extinct  race  that  is  given  to  the  pile  not  only 
by  its  unfinished  state  and  by  the  stains  of  smoke,  un- 
distinguishable  from  those  of  time,  but  by  its  entirely 
exotic  architecture.  As  the  newly- landed  Irishman,, 
making  his  way  up  Broadway  from  Castle  Garden,  is 
said  to  have  exclaimed,  when  he  came  in  sight  of  the 
City  Hall,  that  “ that  never  was  built  in  this  country," 
so  the  stranger  in  Chicago  is  tempted  to  declare  of  its 
municipal  building  that  it  could  not  have  been  reared 
by  the  same  race  of  whose  building  activities  the  other 
evidences  surround  him.  This  single  example  of  Ludo- 
vican  architecture  recalls,  as  most  examples  of  it  do, 
Thackeray’s  caricature  of  its  Mecaenas.  Despoiled  of 
its  periwigs  and  its  high  heels,  that  is  to  say,  of  its  archi- 
tecture, which  is  easily  separable  from  it,  the  building 
would  merely  lose  all  its  character,  without  losing  any- 
thing that  belongs  to  it  as  a building. 

Nevertheless  this  municipal  building  has  its  char- 
acter, and  in  comparison  with  the  next  most  famous 
public  building  of  Chicago,  it  vindicates  the  wisdom  of 
its  architect  in  subjecting  himself  to  the  safeguard  of  a 
style  of  which,  moreover,  his  work  shows  a real  study. 
The  style  may  be  absolutely  irrelevant  both  to  our 
needs  and  to  our  ideas,  as  irrelevant  as  the  political 
system  of  Louis  XIV.  which  it  recalls.  Its  formulas 
may  seem  quite  empty,  but  they  gather  dignity,  if  not 
meaning,  when  contrasted  with  the  work  of  an  avid 
“swallower  of  formulas,”  like  the  architect  of  the  Board 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


I 2 I 


of  Trade.  His  work  is  of  no  style,  a proposition  that 
is  not  invalidated  by  the  probability  that  he  himself 
would  call  it  “ American  eclectic  Gothic.”  We  all  know 
what  the  untutored  and  aboriginal  architect  stretches 
that  term  to  cover.  There  is  no  doubt  about  its  being 


THE  ART  INSTITUTE. 
Burnham  & Root,  Architects. 


characteristically  modern  and  American ; one  might 
say  characteristically  Western,  if  he  did  not  recall 
equally  free  and  untrammelled  exuberances  in  the  At- 
lantic States.  But  it  is  impossible  to  ascribe  to  it  any 
architectural  merit,  unless  a complete  disregard  for 
precedent  is  to  be  imputed  for  righteousness,  whether 
it  proceed  from  ignorance  or  from  contempt.  And, 
indeed,  there  are  not  many  other  structures  in  the 
16 


122 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


United  States,  of  equal  cost  and  pretension,  which 
equally  with  this  combine  the  dignity  of  a commercial 
traveller  with  the  bland  repose  of  St.  Vitus.  It  is 
difficult  to  contemplate  its  bustling  and  uneasy  faqade 
without  feeling  a certain  sympathy  with  the  mob  of 
anarchists  that  “ demonstrated  ” under  its  windows  on 
the  night  of  its  opening.  If  they  were  really  anarchists, 
it  was  very  ungrateful  of  them,  for  one  would  go  far  to 
find  a more  perfect  expression  of  anarchy  in  architec- 
ture, and  it  is  conceivable  that  they  were  instigated  by 
an  outraged  architectural  critic  in  disguise.  If  that 
ringleader  had  been  caught  and  arraigned,  he  could 
have  maintained,  with  much  better  reason,  the  plea 
that  Gustave  Courbet  made  for  his  share  in  the  de- 
struction of  the  column  of  the  Place  Vendome,  that 
his  opposition  to  the  monument  was  not  political,  but 
aesthetic. 

Fortunately  there  is  no  other  among  the  public  or 
quasi -public  buildings  of  Chicago  of  which  the  archi- 
tecture is  so  hopeless  and  so  irresponsible — no  other 
that  would  so  baffle  the  palaeontological  Paley  who 
should  seek  in  it  evidences  of  design,  and  that  does 
not  exhibit,  at  least,  an  architectural  purpose,  carried 
out  with  more  or  less  of  consistency  and  success.  At 
the  very  centre  of  the  commercial  water  front  there 
was  wisely  reserved  from  traffic  in  the  rebuilding  of  the 
town  the  “ Lake  Park,”  a mile  in  extent,  and  some  hun- 
dreds of  feet  in  depth,  which  not  only  serves  the  pur- 
pose of  affording  a view  of  the  lake  from  the  business 
quarter,  but  also  secures  an  effective  foreground  for 
the  buildings  that  line  its  landward  edge.  One  of 
the  oldest  of  these,  young  as  all  of  them  are,  is  the 
“ Art  Institute,”  designed  by  Messrs.  Burnham  & Root. 
This  is  of  a moderate  altitude,  and  suffers  somewhat 
from  being  dwarfed  by  the  elevator  buildings  erected 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


12  3 


since,  being  but  of  three  stories  and  a roof ; but  no 
neighbor  could  make  it  other  than  a vigorous  and 
effective  work,  as  dignified  as  the  Board  of  Trade  is 
uneasy,  and  as  quiet  as  that  is  noisy.  It  is  extremely 
simple  in  composition,  as  will  be  seen,  and  it  bears  very 
little  ornament,  this  being  for  the  most  part  concen- 
trated upon  the  ample  and  deeply  moulded  archway  of 
the  entrance.  It  owes  its  effectiveness  to  the  clearness 
of  its  division  into  the  three  main  parts  of  base  and 
superstructure  and  roof,  to  the  harmonious  relation  be- 
tween them,  and  to  the  differences  in  the  treatment  of 
them  that  enhance  this  harmony.  The  Aristotelian 
precept  that  a work  of  art  must  have  a beginning,  a 
middle,  and  an  end,  is  nowhere  more  conspicuously  valid 


124 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


than  in  architecture,  and  nowhere  does  the  neglect  of 
it  entail  more  unfortunate  consequences.  The  severity 
of  the  basement,  with  its  plain  rectangular  openings,  is 
an  effective  introduction  to  the  somewhat  lighter  and 
more  open  fenestration  of  the  second  and  third  stories, 
which  are  grouped  to  form  the  second  term  in  the  pro- 
portion, and  this  in  turn  to  the  range  of  openings  in 
the  gable  of  the  shorter  front,  and  to  the  row  of  peaked 
dormers  in  the  longer  that  animate  the  sky-line  and 
complete  the  composition.  The  impressiveness  of  the 
fronts  is  very  greatly  deepened  by  the  vigorous  framing 
of  massive  angle  piers  in  which  they  are  enclosed,  the 
vigor  of  which  is  enhanced  by  the  solid  pinnacled  tur- 
rets, corbelled  out  above  the  second  story,  that  help  to 
weight  them,  and  that  visibly  abut  the  outward  thrust 
of  the  arcades.  It  may  be  significant,  with  reference 
to  the  tendency  of  Western  architecture,  that  this  ad- 
mirable building,  admirable  in  the  sobriety  and  mod- 
eration that  are  facilitated  by  its  moderate  size,  is 
precisely  what  one  would  not  expect  to  find  in  Chicago, 
so  little  is  there  evident  in  it  of  an  intention  to  “collar 
the  eye,”  or  to  challenge  the  attention  it  so  very  well 
repays. 

In  part,  as  we  have  just  intimated,  this  modesty  may 
be  ascribed  to  the  modest  dimensions  of  the  building. 
At  any  rate,  it  was  out  of  the  question  in  another  im- 
portant quasi-public  building,  which  is  the  latest,  and,  at 
this  writing,  the  loudest  of  the  lions  of  Chicago — the 
Auditorium.  Whatever  else  a ten-story  building,  nearly 
300  feet  by  more  than  350  in  area  and  140  in  height, 
with  a tower  rising  80  feet  farther,  may  happen  to  be, 
it  must  be  conspicuous,  and  it  is  no  wise  possible  that 
its  designer  should  make  it  appear  bashful  or  unobtru- 
sive. Of  however  retiring  a disposition  he  may  be,  in 
such  a situation  he  must  brazen  it  out.  It  is  in  his 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


125 


Adler  & Sullivan,  Architects. 


power  to  adopt  a very  simple  or  a very  elaborate  treat- 
ment, and  to  imperil  the  success  of  his  work  by  mak- 
ing it  dull  on  the  one  hand  or  unquiet  on  the  other. 
Messrs.  Adler  & Sullivan,  the  architects  of  the  Audi- 
torium, have  chosen  the  better  part  in  treating  their 
huge  fronts  with  great  severity,  insomuch  that  the 
building  can  scarcely  be  said  to  exhibit  any  “features,” 
except  the  triple  entrance  on  the  lake  front,  with  its 
overhanging  balcony,  and  the  square  tower  that  rises 
over  the  southern  front  to  a height  of  225  feet.  While 
they  did  wisely  in  showing  that  monotony  had  fewer 
terrors  for  them  than  restlessness,  the  monotony  that 
undoubtedly  amounts  to  a defect  in  the  aspect  of  the 
completed  work  is  by  no  means  wholly  or  mainly  at- 


I26  AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 

tributable  to  them.  A place  of  popular  entertainment, 
constructed  upon  a scale  and  with  a massiveness  to 
which  we  can  scarcely  find  a parallel  since  Roman  days, 
would  present  one  of  the  worthiest  and  most  interesting 
problems  a modern  architect  could  have  if  he  were  left 
to  solve  it  unhampered.  It  is  quite  difficult  enough  to 
tax  the  power  of  any  designer  without  any  complica- 
tions. The  problem  of  design  in  the  Chicago  Audi- 
torium is  much  complicated  with  requirements  entirely 
irrelevant  to  its  main  purpose.  The  lobbies,  the  audi- 
torium, and  the  stage  of  a great  theatre,  which  are  its 
essential  parts,  are  all  susceptible  of  an  exterior  ex- 
pression more  truthful  and  more  striking  than  has  yet 
been  attained,  in  spite  of  many  earnest  and  interesting 
essays.  In  the  interior  of  the  Auditorium,  where  the 
architects  were  left  free,  they  have  devoted  themselves 
to  solving  their  real  problem  with  a high  degree  of 
success,  and  have  attained  an  impressive  simplicity  and 
largeness.  We  are  not  dealing  with  interiors,  however, 
and  they  were  required  to  envelop  the  outside  of  their 
theatre  in  a shell  of  many-storied  commercial  architec- 
ture, which  forbade  them  even  to  try  for  a monumental 
expression  of  their  great  hall.  In  the  main,  their  ex- 
terior appears  and  must  be  judged  only  as  a “business 
block.”  They  have  their  exits  and  their  entrances,  and 
it  is  really  only  in  these  features  that  the  exterior  be- 
trays the  primary  purpose  of  the  building.  The  tower, 
even,  is  evidently  not  so  much  monumental  as  utilitarian. 
It  is  prepared  for  in  the  substructure  only  by  a slight 
and  inadequate  projection  of  the  piers,  while  it  is  itself 
obviously  destined  for  profitable  occupancy,  being  a 
small  three-story  business  block,  superimposed  upon  a 
huge  ten-story  business  block.  Such  a structure  can- 
not be  converted  into  a monumental  feature  by  making 
it  more  massive  at  the  top  than  it  is  at  the  bottom, 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


I27 


TOWER  OF  AUDITORIUM. 
Adler  & Sullivan.  Architects. 


even  though  the  massiveness  be  as  artistically  accen- 
tuated as  it  is  in  the  tower  of  the  Auditorium  by  the 
powerful  open  colonnade  and  the  strong  machicolated 
cornice  in  which  it  culminates.  Waiving,  as  the  de- 
signers have  been  compelled  to  do,  the  main  purpose 
of  the  structure,  and  considering  it  as  a commercial 
building,  the  Auditorium  does  not  leave  very  much 
to  be  desired.  The  basement,  especially,  which  consists 
of  three  stories  of  granite  darker  than  the  limestone 
of  the  superstructure,  and  appropriately  rough-faced,  is 
a vigorous  and  dignified  performance,  in  which  the  ex- 
pression of  rugged  strength  is  enhanced  by  the  small 
and  deep  openings,  and  in  which  the  necessarily  large 
openings  of  the  ground-floor  are  prevented  from  en- 


128 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


feebling  the  design  by  the  massiveness  of  the  lintels 
and  flat  arches  that  enclose  them,  and  of  the  piers  and 
pillars  by  which  these  are  supported.  The  superstruc- 
ture is  scarcely  worthy  of  this  basement.  The  triple 
vertical  division  of  the  wall  is  effectively  proportioned, 
but  a much  stronger  demarcation  is  needed  between 
the  second  and  third  members  than  is  furnished 
by  the  discontinuous  sill-course  of  the  eighth  story, 
while  a greater  projection,  a greater  depth,  and  a 
more  vigorous  modelling  of  the  main  cornice,  and 
an  enrichment  of  the  attic  beneath,  would  go  far  to 
relieve  the  baldness  and  monotony  that  are  the  de- 
fects of  the  design,  and  that  are  scarcely  to  be  con- 
doned because  there  are  architectural  faults  much 
worse  and  much  more  frequent,  which  the  designers 
have  avoided.  It  is  only,  as  has  been  said,  in  the  en- 
trances that  they  have  been  permitted  to  exhibit  the 
object  of  the  building.  Really,  it  is  only  in  the  en- 
trance on  the  Lake  front,  for  the  triplet  of  stilted  arches 
at  the  base  of  the  tower  is  not  a very  felicitous  or  a 
very  congruous  feature.  The  three  low  arches  of  the 
Lake  front  are  of  a Roman  largeness — true  vomitoria 
— and  their  effectiveness  is  increased  by  the  simplicity 
of  their  treatment,  by  the  ample  lateral  abutment  pro- 
vided for  them,  and  by  the  long  and  shallow  balcony 
that  overhangs  them.  With  the  arches  themselves  this 
makes  a very  impressive  feature,  albeit  the  balcony  is 
a very  questionable  feature.  Even  to  the  layman  there 
must  be  a latent  contradiction  in  the  intercalation  of 
the  pillar  to  relieve  the  bearing  of  a lintel,' when  the 
pillar  is  referred  to  an  unsupported  shelf,  obviously 
lighter  and  weaker  than  the  lintel  itself.  This  contra- 
diction is  not  explained  away  by  the  vigor  and  massive- 
ness of  the  shallow  corbels  that  really  account  for  the 
alternate  columns,  and  it  suggests  that  the  construe- 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


I 29 

tion  so  exhibited  is  not  the  true  construction  at  all, 
and  leaves  this  latter  to  be  inferred  without  any  help 
from  the  architecture.  Even  if  one  waives  his  objec- 
tion to  architectural  forms  that  do  not  agree  with  the 
structural  facts,  it  is  surely  not  pedantic  to  require 
that  the  construction  asserted  by  the  forms  shall  be 
plausible  to  the  extent  of  agreeing  with  itself.  It  is 
a pity  that  there  should  be  such  a drawback  from  a 
feature  so  effective ; but  the  drawback  does  not  prevent 
the  feature  from  being  effective,  nor  do  the  shortcom- 
ings we  have  been  considering  in  the  design  of  the 
Auditorium,  nor  even  the  much  more  serious  obstacle 
that  was  inherent  in  the  problem  and  imposed  upon 
the  architects,  prevent  it  from  being  a very  impressive 
structure,  and  justifying  the  pride  with  which  it  is  re- 
garded by  all  patriotic  Chicagoans. 

But,  as  has  been  intimated,  it  is  not  in  monumental 
edifices  that  the  characteristic  building  of  Chicago  is  to 
be  looked  for.  The  “ business  block,”  entirely  utilitarian 
in  purpose,  and  monumental  only  in  magnitude  and 
in  solidity  of  construction,  is  the  true  and  typical  em- 
bodiment in  building  of  the  Chicago  idea.  This  might 
be  said,  of  course,  of  any  American  city.  Undoubtedly 
the  most  remarkable  achievements  of  our  architects 
and  the  most  creditable  have  been  in  commercial  archi- 
tecture. But  in  this  respect  Chicago  is  more  American 
than  any  of  the  Eastern  cities,  where  there  are  signs, 
even  in  the  commercial  quarters,  of  division  of  interest 
and  infirmity  of  purpose.  In  none  of  them  does  the 
building  bespeak  such  a singleness  of  devotion,  or  in- 
dicate that  life  means  so  exclusively  a living.  Even 
the  exceptions  prove  the  rule  by  such  tokens  as  the 
modest  dimensions  of  the  Art  Institute  and  the  con- 
cealment of  the  Auditorium  in  the  heart  of  a business 
block.  It  does  not  by  any  means  follow  that  the 
l7 


130 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


business  blocks  are  uninteresting.  There  are  sineu- 
larly  few  exceptions  to  the  rule  of  dismalness  in  the 
buildings  that  were  hurriedly  run  up  after  the  fire. 
One  of  these  exceptions,  the  American  Express  Com- 
pany, has  an  extrinsic  interest  as  being  the  work  of  Mr. 
Richardson,  and  as  being,  so  far  as  it  need  be  classified, 
an  example  of  Victorian  Gothic,  although  its  openings 
are  all  lintelled,  instead  of  the  Provenqal  Romanesque 
to  which  its  author  afterwards  addicted  himself  with 
such  success.  So  successful  an  example  is  it  that  an 
eminent  but  possibly  bilious  English  architect,  who 
visited  Chicago  at  an  early  stage  of  the  rebuilding, 
declared  it  to  be  the  only  thing  in  the  town  worth 
looking  at — a judgment  that  does  not  seem  so  harsh 
to  the  tourist  of  to-day  who  compares  it  with  its  thus 
disesteemed  contemporaries.  It  is  a sober  and  straight- 
forward performance  in  a safe  monochrome  of  olive 
sandstone,  and  it  thus  lacks  the  note  of  that  variety 
of  Victorian  Gothic  that  Mr.  Ruskin’s  eloquence  stim- 
ulated untrained  American  designers  to  produce,  in 
which  the  restlessness  of  unstudied  forms  is  still  fur- 
ther tormented  by  the  spotty  application  of  color. 
From  this  variety  of  Victorian  Gothic  Chicago  is  hap- 
pily free.  A gabled  building  in  brick  and  sandstone 
opposite  the  Palmer  House  is  almost  a unique,  and 
not  at  all  an  unfavorable,  example.  The  business 
streets  that  are  now  merely  dismal  would  have  been 
much  more  aggressively  painful  if  the  incapable  archi- 
tects who  built  them  had  deviated  from  the  compara- 
tive safety  of  their  cast-iron  Renaissance  into  a style 
that  put  them  upon  their  individual  want  of  resources. 
Moreover,  throughout  the  commercial  quarter  any  at- 
tempt at  a structural  use  of  color  is  sure  shortly  to  be 
frustrated  by  coal-smoke.  Upon  the  whole,  it  is  a 
matter  for  congratulation  that  the  earlier  rebuilders  of 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


THE  FIELD  BUILDING. 

H.  H.  Richardson,  Architect. 


Chicago, 

what  they  were, 
should  have  been 
so  isrnorant  or 

O 

careless  of  what 
was  sioino-  on  else- 
where,  which,  had 
they  been  aware 
of  it,  they  would 
have  been  quite 
certain  to  mis- 
apply. Not  only 
did  they  thus  escape  the  frantic  result  that  came  of 
Victorian  Gothic  in  untutored  hands,  but  they  escaped 
the  pettiness  and  puerility  that  resulted  of  “ Queen 
Anne,”  even  when  it  was  done  by  designers  who  ought 
to  have  known  better.  These  pages  contain  a dis- 
paragement of  that  curious  mode  of  building  in  a pa- 
per written  when  it  was  dressed  in  its  little  brief  au- 
thority and  playing  its  most  fantastic  tricks.  Now  it  is 
so  well  recognized  that  Queen  Anne  is  dead,  that  it 
seems  strange  educated  architects  ever  could  have  fan- 
cied they  detected  the  promise  and  potency  of  architec- 


132 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


tural  life  in  her  cold  remains.  This  most  evanescent  of 
fashions  seems  never  to  have  prevailed  in  Chicago  at  all. 

One  of  the  earliest  of  the  more  modern  and  charac- 
teristic of  the  commercial  structures  of  Chicago,  the 
Field  Building,  is  by  Mr.  Richardson  also,  a huge  ware- 
house covering  a whole  square,  and  seven  stories  high. 
With  such  an  opportunity,  Mr.  Richardson  could  be 
trusted  implicitly  at  least  to  make  the  most  of  his  di- 
mensions, and  large  as  the  building  is  in  fact,  it  looks 
interminably  big.  Its  bigness  is  made  apparent  by 
the  simplicity  of  its  treatment  and  the  absence  of  any 
lateral  division  whatever.  Simplicity,  indeed,  could 
scarcely  go  further.  The  vast  expanses  of  the  fronts 
are  unrelieved  by  any  ornament  except  a leaf  in  the 
cornice,  and  a rudimentary  capital  in  the  piers  and 
mullions  of  the  colonnaded  attic.  The  effect  of  the 
mass  is  due  wholly  to  its  magnitude,  to  the  disposition 
of  its  openings,  and  to  the  emphatic  exhibition  of  the 
masonic  structure.  The  openings,  except  in  the  attic, 
and  except  for  an  ample  pier  reserved  at  each  corner, 
are  equally  spaced  throughout.  The  vertical  division 
is  limited  to  a sharp  separation  from  the  intermediate 
wall  veil  of  the  basement  on  one  hand,  and  of  the  attic 
on  the  other.  It  must  be  owned  that  there  is  even  a 
distinct  infelicity  in  the  arrangement  of  the  five  stories 
of  this  intermediate  wall,  the  two  superposed  arcades, 
the  upper  of  which,  by  reason  of  its  multiplied  supports, 
is  the  more  solid  of  aspect,  and  between  which  there  is 
no  harmonious  relation,  but  contrariwise  a competition. 
Nevertheless,  the  main  division  is  so  clear,  and  the  han- 
dling throughout  so  vigorous,  as  to  carry  off  even  a more 
serious  defect.  Nothing  of  its  kind  could  be  more  im- 
pressive than  the  rugged  expanse  of  masonry,  of  which 
the  bonding  is  expressed  throughout,  and  which  in  the 
granite  basement  becomes  Cyclopean  in  scale,  and  in 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


133 


the  doorway  especially  Cyclopean  in  rude  strength.  The 
great  pile  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  as  it  is  one  of 
the  most  individual  examples  of  American  commercial 
building.  In  it  the  vulgarity  of  the  “commercial  pal- 
ace” is  gratefully  conspicuous  by  its  absence,  and  it  is 
as  monumental  in  its  massiveness  and  durability  as  it  is 
grimly  utilitarian  in  expression. 

It  is  in  this  observance  of  the  proprieties  of  commer- 
cial architecture,  and  in  this  self-denying  rejection  of  an 
ornateness  improper  to  it,  that  the  best  of  the  commer- 
cial architecture  of  Chicago  is  a welcome  surprise  to  the 
tourist  from  the  East.  When  the  rebuilding  of  the 
business  quarter  of  Boston  was  in  progress, and  while  that 
city  was  for  the  most  part  congratulating  itself  upon  the 
display  of  the  skill  of  its  architects  for  which  the  fire  had 
opened  a field,  Mr.  Richardson  observed  to  the  author  of 
these  remarks  that  there  was  more  character  in  the  plain 
and  solid  warehouses  that  had  been  destroyed  than  in 
the  florid  edifices  by  which  they  had  been  replaced. 
The  saying  was  just,  for  the  burned  Boston  was  as  un- 
mistakably commercial  as  much  of  the  rebuilt  Boston  is 
irrelevantly  palatial.  In  the  warehouse  just  noticed,  Mr. 
Richardson  himself  resisted  this  besetting  temptation  of 
the  architect,  and  his  work  certainly  loses  nothing  of  the 
simplicity  which,  with  the  uninstructed  builders  of  old 
Boston,  was  in  large  part  mere  ignorance  and  unskilful- 
ness, but  emphasizes  it  by  the  superior  power  of  distrib- 
uting his  masses  that  belonged  to  him  as  a trained  and 
sensitive  designer ; for  the  resources  of  an  artist  are  re- 
quired to  give  an  artistic  and  poignant  expression  even 
of  rudeness.  The  rebuilt  commercial  quarter  of  Bos- 
ton is  by  no  means  an  extreme  example  of  misplaced 
ornateness.  Within  the  past  three  or  four  years  Wall 
Street  has  been  converted  from  the  hum-drum  respect- 
ability of  an  old-fashioned  business  thoroughfare  to  a 


*34 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


street  of  commercial  palaces,  the  aspect  of  which  must 
contain  an  element  of  grievousness  to  the  judicious, 
who  see  that  the  builders  have  lavished  their  repertory 
of  ornament  and  variety  on  buildings  to  which  nobody 
resorts  for  pleasure,  but  everybody  for  business  alone, 
and  that  they  have  left  themselves  nothing  further  to 
do  in  the  way  of  enrichment  when  they  come  to  do 
temples  and  palaces,  properly  so  called.  Mr.  Ruskin 
has  fallen  into  deep,  and  largely  into  deserved  discredit 
as  an  architectural  critic,  by  promulgating  rhapsodies  as 
dogmas.  His  intellectual  frivolity  is  even  more  evident 
and  irritating  by  reason  of  the  moral  earnestness  that 
attends  it,  recalling  that  perfervid  pulpiteer  of  whom  a 
like-minded  eulogist  affirmed  that  “he  wielded  his  pru- 
rient imagination  like  a battle-axe  in  the  service  of  the 
Lord  of  Hosts.”  All  the  same,  lovers  of  architecture 
owe  him  gratitude  for  his  eloquent  inculcation  of  some 
of  the  truths  that  he  arrived  at  by  feeling,  however  in- 
conclusive is  the  reasoning  by  which  he  endeavors  to 
support  them,  and  one  of  these  is  the  text,  so  much 
preached  from  in  the  “Seven  Lamps,”  that  “where  rest 
is  forbidden,  so  is  ornament.”  Wall  Street  and  the 
business  quarter  of  Boston,  and  every  commercial  palace 
in  every  city,  violate,  in  differing  degrees,  this  plain  dictate 
of  good  sense  and  good  taste,  even  in  the  very  rare  in- 
stances in  which  the  misplacement  of  the  ornateness  is 
the  worst  thing  that  can  be  alleged  against  it.  In  the 
best  of  the  commercial  buildings  of  Chicago  there  is 
nothing  visible  of  the  conflict  of  which  we  hear  so  much 
from  architects,  mostly  in  the  way  of  complaint,  between 
the  claims  of  “art”  and  the  claims  of  utility,  nor  any  ev- 
idence of  a desire  to  get  the  better  of  a practical  client 
by  smuggling  architecture  upon  him,  and  deceiving  him 
for  his  own  good  and  the  glory  of  his  architect.  It  is  a 
very  good  lesson  to  see  how  the  strictly  architectural  sue- 


. Beman,  Architect. 


> 

n 

> 

D 

M 


X 

PI 


'1 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


137 


cess  of  the  commercial  buildings  is  apt  to  be  directly  in 
proportion  to  the  renunciation  by  the  designers  of  con- 
ventional “ architecturesqueness,”  and  to  their  loyal  ac- 
ceptance at  all  points  of  the  utilitarian  conditions  under 
which  they  are  working. 

The  Studebaker  Building  is  one  of  the  show  build- 
in  sis  of  Chicaq-o,  but  it  cannot  be  said  to  deserve  this 
particular  praise  in  so  high  a degree  as  several  less  cel- 
ebrated structures.  It  partakes  — shall  we  say? — too 
much  of  the  palatial  character  of  Devonshire  Street  and 
Wall  Street  to  be  fairly  representative  of  the  severity  of 
commercial  architecture  in  Chicago.  It  is  very  ad- 
vantageously placed,  fronting  the  Lake  Park,  and  it  is 
in  several  respects  not  unworthy  of  its  situation.  The 
arrangement  of  the  first  five  stories  is  striking,  and  the 
arcade  that  embraces  the  three  upper  of  these  is  a strik- 
ing and  well-studied  feature,  with  detail  very  good  in 
itself  and  very  well  adjusted  in  place  and  in  scale.  It 
is  the  profusion  of  this  detail  and  the  lavish  introduc- 
tion of  carved  marble  and  of  polished  granite  shafts 
that  first  impress  every  beholder  with  its  palatial  rather 
than  commercial  character,  but  this  character  is  not 
less  given  to  the  front,  or  to  that  part  of  it  which  has 
character,  by  the  very  general  composition  that  makes 
the  front  so  striking.  An  arcade  superposed  upon  two 
colonnades,  which  are  together  of  less  than  its  own 
height,  can  scarcely  fail  of  impressiveness ; but  here  it 
loses  some  of  its  impressiveness  in  losing  all  its  signifi- 
cance by  reason  of  its  subdivision  into  three  equal 
stories,  none  of  them  differing  in  purpose  from  any 
other  or  from  the  colonnade  below,  and  the  larger 
grouping  that  simulates  a lofty  hall  above  two  minor 
stories  is  thus  seen  to  be  merely  capricious.  Of  course 
pretty  much  the  same  criticism  may  be  passed  upon 
most  American  works  of  commercial  architecture,  and 
18 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


133 

upon  the  best  not  less  than  upon  the  worst,  but  that  it 
cannot  be  passed  upon  the  best  commercial  buildings 
of  Chicago  is  their  peculiar  praise.  Moreover,  the 
Studebaker  building  has  some  marked  defects  peculiar 
to  its  design.  The  flanking  piers  of  the  building,  in 
spite  of  the  effort  made  to  increase  their  apparent  mas- 
siveness by  a solid  treatment  of  the  terminal  arches  at 
the  base,  are  painfully  thin  and  inadequate,  and  their 
tenuity  is  emphasized  by  the  modelling  into  nook  shafts 
of  their  inner  angles  in  the  second  story.  These  are 
serious  blemishes  upon  the  design  of  the  first  five  sto- 
ries, and  these  stories  exhaust  the  architectural  interest 
of  the  building.  There  is  something  even  ludicrous  in 
the  sudden  and  complete  collapse  of  the  architecture 
above  the  large  arcade,  as  if  the  ideas  of  the  designer 
had  all  at  once  given  out,  or  rather  as  if  an  untrained 
builder  had  been  called  upon  to  add  three  stories  to  the 
unfinished  work  of  a scholarly  architect.  In  truth,  this 
superstructure  does  not  show  a single  felicity  either  of 
disposition  or  detail,  but  is  wholly  mean  and  common- 
place. It  suffices  to  vulgarize  the  building  below  it,  and 
it  is  itself  quite  superfluously  vulgarized  by  the  unmean- 
ing and  irrelevant  conical  roofs  with  which  the  sky-line 
is  tormented.  If  the  substructure  be  amenable  to  the 
criticism  that  it  is  not  commercial  architecture,  the  su- 
perstructure is  amenable  to  the  more  radical  criticism 
that  it  is  not  architecture  at  all. 

The  Owings  Building  is  another  conspicuous  com- 
mercial structure  that  invites  the  same  criticism  of  not 
being  strictly  commercial,  but  in  a very  different  way. 
There  is  here  no  prodigality  of  ornament,  and  no  irrel- 
evant preciousness  of  material.  A superstructure  of 
grayish  brick  surmounts  a basement  of  gray-stone,  and 
the  only  decoration  is  reserved  for  the  main  entrance, 
which  it  is  appropriate  to  signalize  and  render  conspicu- 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


139 


ouseven  in  works 
of  the  barest 
utility.  This  is 
attained  here  by 
the  lofty  gable, 
crocheted  and 
covered  with 
carving,  that  rises 
above  the  plain 
archway  which 
forms  the  en- 
trance itself.  The 
lintelled  open- 
ings of  the  base- 
ment  elsewhere 
are  of  a Puritan- 
ical severity,  and 
so  are  the  arched  openings  of 
the  brick  superstructure.  Neither 
is  there  the  least  attempt  to  suggest 
the  thing  that  is  not  in  the  interior  ar- 
rangement by  way  of  giving  variety  and 
interest  to  the  exterior.  In  the  treat- 
ment of  the  wall  space,  the  only  one  of 
the  “unnecessary  features,”  in  which  Mr. 

Ruskin  declares  architecture  to  consist,  is  the  corniced 
frieze  above  the  fourth  story  of  the  superstructure,  with 
its  suggested  support  of  tall  and  slim  pilasters;  and 
this  is  quite  justifiable  as  giving  the  building  a triple 
division,  and  distinguishing  the  main  wall  from  the 
gable.  For  this  purpose,  however,  obviously  enough, 
the  dividing  feature  should  be  placed  between  the 
two  parts  it  is  meant  to  differentiate ; and  in  the  pres- 
ent instance  this  line  is  two  stories  higher  than  the 
point  actually  selected,  and  is  now  marked  only  by 


THE  OWINGS  BUILDING. 
Cobb  &. Frost,  Architects. 


140 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


a light  string  course.  If  the  emphatic  horizontal 
belt  had  been  raised  these  two  stories,  the  division  it 
creates  would  not  only  have  corresponded  to  the  or- 
ganic division  of  the  building,  but  another  requisite  of 
architectural  composition  would  have  been  fulfilled,  in- 
asmuch as  one  of  the  three  members  would  visibly  have 
predominated  over  the  others ; whereas  now  the  three 
are  too  nearly  equal.  It  is  quite  true  that  the  prolonga- 
tion of  the  pilasters  through  two  more  stories  would 
have  made  them  spindle  quite  intolerably,  but  in  any 
case  they  are  rather  superfluous  and  impertinent,  and 
it  would  have  decorated  the  fronts  to  omit  them.  The 
accentuation  of  vertical  lines  by  extraneous  features  is 
not  precisely  what  is  needed  in  a twelve-story  building 
of  these  dimensions.  In  these  points,  however,  there  is 
no  departure  from  the  spirit  of  commercial  architect- 
ure. That  occurs  here,  not  in  detail,  but  in  the  general 
scheme  that  gives  the  building  its  picturesqueness  of 
outline.  The  corbelled  turret  at  the  angle  makes  more 
eligible  the  rooms  its  openings  light,  but  the  steep 
gabled  roofs  which  this  turret  unites  and  dominates 
plainly  enough  fail  to  utilize  to  the  utmost  the  spaces 
they  enclose,  and  so  far  violate  the  conditions  of  com- 
mercial architecture.  It  seems  ungracious  to  find  fault 
with  them  on  that  account,  they  are  so  successfully 
studied  in  mass  and  in  detail,  and  the  group  they  make 
with  the  turret  is  so  spirited  and  effective;  but  never- 
theless they  evidently  do  not  belong  to  an  office  build- 
ing, and,  to  borrow  the  expression  of  a Federal  judge 
upon  a famous  occasion,  their  very  picturesqueness  is 
aliunde. 

We  have  been  speaking,  of  course,  of  the  better  com- 
mercial edifices,  and  it  is  by  no  means  to  be  inferred 
that  Chicago  does  not  contain  “elevator  buildings”  as 
disunited  and  absurd  and  restless  as  those  of  any  other 


CORNER  OF  INSURANCE  EXCHANGE. 

Burnham  & Root,  Architects. 


'5 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


143 


American  town.  About  these  select  few,  also,  there  is 
nothing  especially  characteristic.  They  might  be  in 
New  York,  or  Boston,  or  Philadelphia,  for  any  local 
color  that  they  exhibit.  It  is  otherwise  with  the  com- 
mercial buildings  designed  by  Messrs.  Burnham  & 
Root.  With  the  striking  exception  of  Mr.  Richardson’s 
P'ield  Building,  the  names  of  these  designers  connote 
what  there  is  of  characteristically  Chicagoan  in  the  ar- 
chitecture of  the  business  streets,  so  that,  after  all,  the 
individuality  is  not  local,  but  personal.  The  untimely 
and  deplorable  death  of  John  Wellborn  Root  makes  it 
proper  to  say  that  the  individuality  was  mainly  his.  It 
consists  largely  in  a clearer  perception  than  one  finds 
elsewhere  of  the  limitations  and  conditions  of  com- 
mercial architecture,  or  in  a more  austere  and  self- 
denying  acting  upon  that  perception.  This  is  the  quality 
that  such  towering  structures  as  the  Insurance  Ex- 
change, the  Phoenix  Building,  and  “ The  Rookery  ” have 
in  common,  and  that  clearly  distinguishes  them  from 
the  mass  of  commercial  palaces  in  Chicago  or  else- 
where. There  is  no  sacrifice  to  picturesqueness  of  the 
utilitarian  purpose  in  their  general  form,  as  in  the  com- 
position of  the  Owings  Building,  and  no  denial  of  it  in 
detail,  as  in  the  irrelevant  arcade  of  the  Studebaker 
Building.  Their  flat  roofs  are  not  tormented  into  pro- 
tuberances in  order  to  animate  their  sky-lines,  and  those 
of  them  that  are  built  around  an  interior  court  are 
frankly  hypaethral.  Nor  is  there  in  any  of  them  any 
incongruous  preciousness  of  material.  They  are  of  brick, 
brown  or  red,  upon  stone  basements,  and  the  ornament 
is  such,  and  only  such,  as  is  needed  to  express  and  to 
emphasize  the  structural  divisions  and  dispositions. 
These  are  negative  merits,  it  is  true,  but  as  our  com- 
mercial architecture  goes,  they  are  not  less  meritorious 
on  that  account,  and  one  is  inclined  to  wish  that  the 


144 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


architects  of  all  the  commercial  palaces  might  attend  to 
the  preachments  upon  the  fitness  of  things  that  these 
edifices  deliver,  for  they  have  very  positive  merits  also. 
They  are  all  architectural  compositions,  and  not  mere 
walls  promiscuously  pierced  with  openings,  or,  what  is 
much  commoner,  mere  ranges  of  openings  scantily 
framed  in  strips  of  wall.  They  are  sharply  and  un- 
mistakably divided  into  the  parts  that  every  building 
needs  to  be  a work  of  architecture,  the  members  that 
mark  the  division  are  carefully  and  successfully  ad- 
justed with  reference  to  their  place  and  their  scale,  and 
the  treatment  of  the  different  parts  is  so  varied  as  to 
avoid  both  monotony  and  miscellany.  The  angle  piers, 
upon  the  visible  sufficiency  of  which  the  effectiveness, 
especially  of  a lofty  building,  so  largely  depends,  never 
fail  in  this  sufficiency,  and  the  superior  solidity  that 
the  basement  of  any  building  needs  as  a building,  when 
it  cannot  be  attained  in  fact  by  reason  of  commercial 
exigencies,  is  suggested  in  a more  rugged  and  more 
massive  treatment  not  less  than  in  the  employment  of 
a visibly  stronger  material.  These  dispositions  are 
aided  by  the  devices  at  the  command  of  the  architect. 
The  angle  piers  are  weighted  to  the  eye  by  the  solid 
corbelled  pinnacles  at  the  top,  as  in  the  Insurance  Ex- 
change and  the  Rookery,  or  stiffened  by  a slight  with- 
drawal that  gives  an  additional  vertical  line  on  each 
side  of  the  arris,  as  in  the  Phoenix,  while  the  same 
purpose  is  partly  subserved  in  the  Rookery  by  the 
projection  from  the  angle  of  the  tall  metallic  lantern 
standards  that  repeat  and  enforce  this  line.  The  lat- 
eral division  of  the  principal  fronts  is  similar  in  all 
three  structures.  A narrow  central  compartment  is 
distinguished  in  treatment,  by  an  actual  projection  or 
by  the  thickening  of  the  pier,  from  the  longer  wings, 
while  the  coincidence  of  this  central  division  with  the 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


H5 

main  entrance  relieves  the  arrangement  from  the  un- 
pleasant look  of  an  arrangement  obviously  forced  or 
arbitrary.  In  the  Insurance  Exchange  the  centre  is 
signalized  by  a balconied  projection  over  the  entrance, 
extending  through  the  architectural  basement  — the 
dado,  so  to  speak,  which  is  here  the  principal  division ; 
by  a widening  of  the  pier  and  a concentration  of  the 
central  openings  in  the  second  division,  and  above  by 
an  interruption  of  the  otherwise  unbroken  arcade  that 


ENTRANCE  TO  THE  PHCENIX  BUILDING. 
Burnham  & Root.  Architects. 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


146 

traverses  the  attic.  In  the  Rookery  it  is  marked  by  a 
slight  projection,  which  above  is  still  further  projected 
into  tall  corbelled  pinnacles,  and  the  wall  thus  bounded 
is  slightly  bowed,  and  its  openings  diminished  and  mul- 
tiplied. In  the  Phoenix  Building  this  bowing  is  carried 
so  much  further  as  to  result  in  a corbelled  oriel,  extend- 
ing through  four  stories,  and  repeated  on  a smaller  scale 
at  each  end  of  the  principal  front  and  in  the  centre  of 
each  shorter  front.  This  feature  may  perhaps  be  ex- 
cepted from  the  general  praise  the  buildings  deserve  of 
a strict  adherence  to  their  utilitarian  purpose.  Not  that 
even  in  Chicago  a business  man  may  not  have  occasion 
to  look  out  of  the  window,  nor  that,  if  he  does,  he  may 
not  be  pardoned  for  desiring  to  extend  his  view  beyond 
the  walls  and  windows  of  over  the  way.  An  oriel-win- 
dow is  not  necessarily  an  incongruity  in  a “ business 
block,”  but  the  treatment  of  these  oriels  is  a little  fan- 
tastic and  a little  ornate  for  their  destination,  and  belongs 
rather  to  domestic  than  to  commercial  architecture,  and 
it  is  not  in  any  case  fortunate.  This  is  the  sole  excep- 
tion, however,  to  be  made  on  this  score.  The  entrances, 
to  be  sure,  are  enriched  with  a decoration  beyond  the 
mere  expression  of  the  structure  which  has  elsewhere 
been  the  rule,  but  they  do  not  appear  incongruous.  The 
entrance  to  a building  that  houses  the  population  of  a 
considerable  village  must  be  wide,  and  if  its  height  were 
regulated  by  that  of  the  human  figure  it  would  resem- 
ble the  burrow  by  which  the  Esquimau  gains  access  to 
his  snow-hut,  and  become  a manifest  absurdity  as  the 
portal  of  a ten-story  building.  It  must  be  large  and 
conspicuous,  and  it  should  be  stately,  and  it  were  a 
“very  cynical  asperity”  to  deny  to  the  designer  the 
privilege  of  enhancing  by  ornament  the  necessary  state- 
liness of  the  one  feature  of  his  building  which  must 
arrest,  for  a moment  at  least,  the  attention  of  the  most 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


H7 


preoccupied  visitor.  It 
cannot  be  said  that  such 
a feature  as  the  entrance 
of  the  Phoenix  Building 
is  intensely  characteris- 
tic of  a modern  business 
block,  but  it  can  be  said 
that  in  its  place  it  does 
not  in  the  least  disturb 
the  impression  the  struct- 
ure makes  of  a modern 
business  block.  If  beau- 
ty be  its  own  excuse  for 
being,  this  entrance 
needs  no  other,  for  assur- 
edly it  is  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  artistic 
works  that  American  ar- 
chitecture has  to  show, 
so  admirably  propor- 
tioned it  is,  and  so  ad- 
mirably detailed,  so  clear 
and  emphatic  without 
exaggeration  is  the  ex- 
pression of  the  structure, 
and  so  rich  and  refined 
the  ornament.  Upon  the 
whole  these  buildings, 

by  far  the  most  successful  and  impressive  of  the  busi- 
ness buildings  of  Chicago,  not  merely  attest  the  skill 
of  their  architects,  but  reward  their  self-denial  in  mak- 
ing the  design  for  a commercial  building  out  of  its 
own  elements,  however  unpromising  these  may  seem  ; 
in  permitting  the  building,  in  a word,  to  impose  its  de- 
sign upon  them  and  in  following  its  indications,  rather 


ORIEL,  PHCENIX  BUILDING. 
Burnham  & Root,  Architects, 


143 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


than  in  imposing  upon  the  building  a design  derived 
from  anything  but  a consideration  of  its  own  require- 
ments. Hence  it  is  that,  without  showing  anywhere 
any  strain  after  originality,  these  structures  are  more 
original  than  structures  in  which  such  a strain  is  evi- 
dent. “The  merit  of  originality  is  not  novelty;  it  is 
sincerity.”  The  designer  did  not  permit  himself  to  be 
diverted  from  the  problem  in  hand  by  a consideration 
of  the  irrelevant  beauties  of  Roman  theatres,  or  Floren- 
tine palaces,  or  Flemish  town -halls,  and  accordingly 
the  work  is  not  reminiscent  of  these  nor  of  any  previous 
architectural  types,  of  which  so  many  contemporary 
buildings  have  the  air  of  being  adaptations  under  ex- 
treme difficulties.  It  is  to  the  same  directness  and 
sincerity  in  the  attempt  to  solve  a novel  problem  that 
these  buildings  owe  what  is  not  their  least  attraction, 
in  the  sense  they  convey  of  a reserved  power.  The 
architect  of  a commercial  palace  seems  often  to  be  dis- 
charging his  architectural  vocabulary  and  wreaking  his 
entire  faculty  of  expression  upon  that  contradiction  in 
terms.  Some  of  the  buildings  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking  exhibit  this  prodigality.  There  is  something 
especially  grateful  and  welcome  in  turning  from  one  of 
them  to  a building  like  one  of  those  now  in  question, 
which  suggests  by  comparison  that,  after  he  had  com- 
pleted the  design  of  it,  the  architect  might  still  have 
had  something  left — in  his  portfolios  and  in  his  intel- 
lect. 

In  considering  the  domestic  architecture  of  Chicago 
it  is  necessary  to  recur  to  the  topographical  conditions, 
for  these  have  had  as  marked  an  influence  upon  it  as 
they  have  had  upon  the  commercial  quarter,  although 
this  influence  operates  in  almost  the  opposite  direction. 
The  commercial  centre — the  quarter  of  wholesale  traf- 
fic and  of  “high  finance” — is  huddled  into  the  space 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


149 


between  the  lake  and  the  river.  But  when  this  limit  is 
once  passed  there  is  no  natural  limit.  No  longer  pent 
up,  the  whole  boundless  continent  is  Chicago’s,  and  the 
instinct  of  expansion  is  at  liberty  to  assert  itself  in  every 
direction  but  the  east,  where  it  is  confronted  by  Lake 
Michigan.  There  is  thus  no  east  side  in  Chicago  to 
supplement  the  north  and  the  west  and  the  south  sides, 
among  which  the  dwellings  of  the  people  are  divided, 
but  there  is  no  natural  obstacle  whatsoever  to  the  de- 
velopment of  the  city  in  these  three  directions,  and  no 
natural  reason  why  it  should  expand  in  one  rather  than 
in  another  except  what  is  again  furnished  by  the  lake. 
To  the  minority  of  people,  who  live  where  they  will  and 
not  where  they  must,  this  is  a considerable  exception, 
and  one  would  suppose  that  the  fashionable  quarter 
would  be  that  quarter  from  which  the  lake  is  most  ac- 
cessible. This  is  distinctly  enough  the  north  side,  which 
a stranger,  without  the  slightest  interest,  present  or  pros- 
pective, in  Chicago  real  estate,  may  be  pardoned  for  in- 
ferring to  be  the  most  desirable  for  residence.  For  it 
happens  that  the  dwellers  upon  the  south  side  are  cut 
off  from  any  practical  or  picturesque  use  of  the  lake  by 
the  fact  that  the  shore  to  the  south  of  the  city  is  occu- 
pied by  railroad  tracks,  and  the  nearest  houses  of  any 
pretensions  are  turned  away  from  the  water,  of  which 
only  the  horses  stabled  in  the  rear  are  in  a position  to 
enjoy  the  view.  The  inference  that  the  north  is  the 
most  eligible  of  the  sides  one  finds  to  be  violently  com- 
bated by  the  residents  of  the  south  and  the  west,  and 
he  finds  also  that,  instead  of  one  admittedly  fashiona- 
ble quarter,  as  in  every  other  city,  Chicago  has  three 
claimants  for  that  distinction.  Each  of  these  quarters 
has  its  centre  and  its  dependencies,  and  between  each 
two  there  is  a large  area  either  unoccupied,  or  occupied 
with  dwellings  very  much  humbler  than  those  that  line 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


150 

the  avenues  that  are  severally  the  boasts  of  the  compet- 
ing sides.  The  three  appear  to  have  received  nearly 
equal  shares  of  municipal  attention,  for  there  is  a park 
for  each — nay,  there  are  three  parks  for  the  west  side, 
though  these  are  thus  far  well  beyond  the  limit  of  fash- 
ion if  not  of  population,  and  nominally  two  for  the  south 
side,  though  even  these  bear  more  the  relation  to  the 
quarter  for  which  they  were  provided  that  the  Central 
Park  bore  to  New  York  in  1870  than  that  which  it  bears 
in  1891.  They  are  still,  that  is  to  say,  rather  outlying 
pleasure-grounds  accessible  to  excursionists  than  parks 
in  actual  public  use.  Lincoln  Park,  the  park  of  the 
north  side,  is  the  only  one  of  the  parks  of  Chicago  that 
as  yet  deserves  this  description,  and  the  north  side  is 
much  to  be  congratulated  upon  possessing  such  a resort. 
It  has  the  great  advantage  of  an  unobstructed  frontage 
upon  the  lake,  and  it  is  kept  with  the  same  skill  and 
propriety  with  which  it  was  planned. 

It  will  be  evident  from  all  this  that  in  the  three  resi- 
dential quarters  of  Chicago  there  is  plenty  of  room,  and 
it  is  this  spaciousness  that  gives  a pervading  character- 
istic to  its  domestic  architecture.  The  most  fashionable 
avenues  are  not  filled  with  the  serried  ranks  of  houses 
one  expects  to  see  in  a city  of  a million  people.  On 
the  contrary,  in  Michigan  Avenue  and  Prairie  Avenue, 
on  the  south  side,  and  in  the  corresponding  streets  in 
the  other  quarters,  there  is  commonly  a considerable 
strip  of  sward  in  front  of  the  house,  and  often  at  the 
sides  as  well.  The  houses  are  often  completely  or  partly 
detached,  and  they  are  frequently  of  a generous  breadth, 
and  always  of  a moderate  height.  Three  stories  is  the 
limit,  which  is  rarely  exceeded  even  in  the  costliest  dwell- 
ings. Conditions  so  different  prevail  in  all  the  Eastern 
cities,  even  in  Philadelphia,  the  roominess  of  which 
is  one  of  its  sources  of  local  pride,  that  to  the  inhabit- 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


15  1 

ant  of  any  one  of  them  the  domestic  building  of  Chicago 
indicates  a much  less  populous  city  than  Chicago  is, 
and  its  character  seems  rather  suburban  than  urban. 
In  the  main,  this  character  of  suburbanity  is  heightened 
by  the  architectural  treatment  of  the  dwellings.  There 
are  exceptions,  and  some  of  them  are  conspicuous  and 
painful  exceptions  ; but  the  rule  is  that  the  architect  at- 
tempts to  make  the  house  even  of  a rich  man  look  like 
a home  rather  than  like  a palace,  and  that  there  is  very 
little  of  the  mere  ostentation  of  riches.  Even  upon  the 
speculative  builder  this  feeling  seems  to  have  imposed 
itself ; and  however  crude  and  violent  his  work  may  be 
in  other  ways,  it  does  not  very  often  offend  in  this  par- 
ticular direction.  The  commercial  palace  against  which 
we  have  been  inveighing  is  by  no  means  so  offensive  as 
the  domestic  sham  palace,  and  from  this  latter  offence 
Chicago  is  much  freer  than  most  older  American  cities. 
The  grateful  result  is  that  the  houses  in  the  best  quar- 
ters are  apt  to  look  eminently  “ livable and  though 
inequalities  of  fortune  are  visible  enough,  there  is  not  so 
visible  as  to  be  conspicuous  any  attempt  of  the  more 
fortunate  to  force  them  on  the  notice  of  the  less  fortu- 
nate. In  other  words,  Chicago  is,  in  its  outward  aspect 
at  least,  the  most  democratic  of  great  American  cities, 
and  its  aspect  increases  one’s  wonder  that  anarchism 
should  have  sprung  up  in  this  rich  and  level  soil — to 
which,  of  course,  the  answer  is  that  it  didn’t,  being  dis- 
tinctly an  exotic. 

Another  characteristic  of  the  domestic  architecture 
of  Chicago  there  is — less  prevalent  than  this  absence 
of  pretentiousness  and  mere  display,  but  still  prevalent 
enough  to  be  very  noteworthy — and  that  is  the  evidence 
it  affords  of  an  admiration  for  the  work  of  Mr.  Richard- 
son, which,  if  not  inordinate,  is  at  least  undiscriminat- 
ing and  misapplied.  What  region  of  our  land,  indeed, 


152 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


is  not  full  of  his  labors,  done  vicariously,  and  with  a 
zeal  not  according;  to  knowledge?  In  Chicago  his  mis- 
understood  example  has  fructified  much  more  in  the 
quarters  of  residence  than  in  the  business  quarters,  in- 
somuch that  one  can  scarcely  walk  around  a square, 
either  in  the  north  or  in  the  south  side,  without  seeing 
some  familiar  feature  or  detail,  which  has  often  been 


JANUA  RICH ARDSONIENSIS. 
N'Importe  Qui,  Architect. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


T53 


borrowed  outright  from  one  of  his  works,  and  is  repro- 
duced without  reference  to  its  context.  Now  the  great 
and  merited  success  of  Richardson  was  as  personal  and 
incommunicable  as  any  artistic  success  can  be.  It  was 
due  to  his  faculty  of  reducing  a complicated  problem  to 
its  simplest  and  most  forcible  expression.  More  specif- 
ically, it  was  due  to  his  faculty  for  seizing  some  feature 
of  his  building,  developing  it  into  predominance,  and 
skilfully  subordinating  the  rest  of  his  composition  to  it, 
until  this  feature  became  the  building.  It  was  his  power 
of  disposing  masses,  his  insistence  upon  largeness  and 
simplicity,  his  impatience  of  niggling,  his  straightfor- 
ward and  virile  handling  of  his  tasks,  that  made  his 
successes  brilliant,  and  even  his  failures  interesting. 
Very  much  of  all  this  is  a matter  of  temperament,  and 
Richardson’s  best  buildings  were  the  express  images  of 
that  impetuous  and  exuberant  personality  that  all  who 
knew  him  remember.  He  used  to  tell  of  a tourist  from 
Holland  in  whom  admiration  for  his  art  had  induced  a 
desire  to  make  his  acquaintance,  and  who  upon  being  in- 
troduced to  him  exclaimed:  “ Oh,  Mr.  Richardson,  how 
you  are  like  your  work  !”  “ Now  wasn’t  that  a Dutch 

remark  ?”  Richardson  concluded  the  story.  Indeed,  the 
tact  of  the  salutation  must  be  admitted  to  have  been 
somewhat  Batavian,  but  it  was  not  without  critical  value. 
One  cannot  conceive  of  Richardson’s  work  as  having 
been  done  by  an  anaemic  architect,  or  by  a self-distrust- 
ful architect,  or  by  a professor  of  architecture,  faithful 
as  his  own  professional  preparation  had  been.  There 
is  a distinction  well  recognized  in  the  art  to  which  archi- 

O 

tecture  has  more  or  less  plausibly  been  likened  that  is 
no  less  valid  as  applied  to  architecture  itself — the  dis- 
tinction between  “school  music”  and  “bravura  music.” 
If  we  adopt  this  distinction,  Richardson  must  be  classed 
among  the  bravura  performers  in  architecture,  who  are 
20 


x54 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


eligible  rather 
for  admiration 
than  for  study. 
Assuredly  de- 
signers will  get 
nothing  but  good 
from  his  work  if 
they  learn  from 
it  to  try  for  large- 
ness and  simplic- 
ity, to  avoid  nig- 
gling, and  to  con- 
sider first  of  all 
the  disposition 
of  their  masses. 
But  these  are 
merits  that  can- 
not be  trans- 
ferred from  a pho- 
tograph. They 
are  quite  inde- 
pendent of  a 
fondness  for  the 
Provenqal  Ro- 
manesque, and 

ORIEL  OF  DWELLING.  still  more  of  an 

Hu„t, Architect.  exaggeration  of 

o o 

the  depth  of  voussoirs  and  of  the  dwarfishness  of  pillars. 
These  things  are  readily  enough  imitable,  as  nearly  every 
block  of  dwellings  in  Chicago  testifies,  but  they  are  scarce- 
ly worth  imitating.  In  Richardson’s  best  work  there  is 
apt  to  be  some  questionable  detail,  since  the  success  or  fail- 
ure of  his  building  is  commonly  decided  before  the  consid- 
eration of  detail  arises,  and  it  is  this  questionable  detail 
that  the  imitators  are  apt  to  reproduce  without  asking 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


1 55 


it  any  questions.  Moreover,  it  will  probably  be  agreed 
by  most  students  that  Richardson’s  city  houses  are,  upon 
the  whole,  and  in  spite  of  some  noteworthy  exceptions, 
the  least  successful  of  his  works.  As  it  happens,  there 
are  two  of  them  in  Chicago  itself,  one  on  the  north  side 
and  one  on  the  south,  and  if  their  author  had  done  noth- 
ing else,  it  is  likely  that  they  would  be  accepted  rather 
as  warnings  than  as  examples.  The  principal  front  of 
the  former  has  the  simple  leading  motive  that  one  sel- 
dom fails  to  find  in  the  work  of  its  architect,  in  the  cen- 
tral open  loggia  of  each  of  its  three  stories,  flanked  on 
each  side  by  an  abutment  of  solid  wall,  and  the  appor- 
tionment of  the  front  between  voids  and  solids  is  just 
and  felicitous.  Three  loggie  seem  an  excessive  allow- 


i 1 ' - MjjSfejajw 


DWELLING  IN  LAKE  SHORE  DRIVE. 
H.  II.  Richardson,  Architect. 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


156 

ance  for  the  town-house  of  a single  family ; but  if  we 
waive  this  point  as  an  affair  between  the  architect  and 
his  client  exclusively,  it  must  be  owned  that  the  arrange- 
ment supplies  a motive  susceptible  of  very  effective  de- 
velopment. In  this  case  it  cannot  be  said  to  have  been 
developed  effectively;  nay,  it  can  hardly  be  said  to  have 
been  developed  in  an  architectural  sense  at  all,  and  the 
result  proves  that  though  a skilful  disposition  of  masses 
is  much,  it  is  not  everything.  We  have  just  been  say- 
ing that  the  success  or  failure  of  Richardson’s  work  was 
in  a great  degree  independent  of  the  merit  of  the  detail,, 
but  this  dwelling  scarcely  exhibits  any  detail.  This  is 
the  more  a drawback  because  the  loggia  is  a feature  of 
which  lightness  and  openness  is  the  essential  charac- 
teristic, and  which  seems,  therefore,  to  demand  a cer- 
tain elegance  of  treatment,  as  was  recognized  alike  by 
the  architects  of  the  Gothic  and  the  Renaissance  palaces 
in  Italy,  from  which  we  derive  the  feature  and  the  name. 
It  is,  indeed,  in  the  contrast  between  the  lightened  and 
enriched  fenestration  of  the  centre  and  the  massiveness 
of  the  flanking  walls  that  the  potential  effectiveness  of 
the  arrangement  resides.  Here,  however,  there  is  no 
lightening  and  no  enrichment.  Rude  vigor  character- 
izes as  much  the  enclosed  arcades  as  the  enclosing  walls, 
and  becomes  as  much  the  predominant  expression  of  the 
front  of  a dwelling  of  moderate  dimensions  as  of  the  huge 
facades  of  the  Field  warehouse.  Such  modelling  as  is 
introduced  tends  rather  to  enforce  than  to  mitigate  this 
expression,  for  the  piers  of  the  lower  arcade  are  squared, 
and  the  intercalated  shafts  of  the  upper  are  doubled  per- 
pendicularly to  the  front,  as  are  the  shafts  of  the  colon- 
nade above,  so  as  to  lay  an  additional  stress  upon  the 
thickness  of  a wall  that  is  here  manifestly  a mere  screen. 
The  continuation  of  the  abacus  of  the  arcade  through 
the  wall  and  its  reappearance  as  the  transom  of  the  flank- 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


1 57 

ing  windows  is  an  effective  device  that  loses  some  of  its 
effectiveness  from  its  introduction  into  both  arcades. 
It  scarcely  modifies  the  impression  the  front  makes  of 
lacking  detail  altogether.  The  double-dentilled  string- 
course that  marks  off  and  corbels  out  the  attic  is  virtu- 
ally the  only  moulding  the  front  shows.  Yet  the  need 
of  mouldings  is  not  less  now  than  it  was  in  the  remote 
antiquity  when  a forgotten  Egyptian  artist  perceived 
the  necessity  of  some  expedient  to  subdivide  a wall,  to 
mark  a level,  to  sharpen  or  to  soften  a transition.  For 
th  ree  thousand  years  his  successors  have  agreed  with 
him,  and  for  a modern  architect  to  abjure  the  use  of 
these  devices  is  to  deny  himself  the  rhetoric  of  his  art. 
The  incompleteness  that  comes  of  this  abjuration  in  the 
present  instance  must  be  apparent  to  the  least-trained 
layman,  who  vaguely  feels  that  “something  is  the  mat- 
ter ” with  the  building  thus  deprived  of  a source  of  ex- 
pression, for  which  the  texture  given  to  the  whole  front 
by  the  exhibition  of  the  bonding  of  the  masonry,  skilful 
and  successful  as  this  is  in  itself,  by  no  means  compen- 
sates. The  sensitive  architect  must  yearn  to  set  the 
stone-cutters  at  work  anew  to  bring  out  the  expression 
of  those  parts  that  are  especially  in  need  of  rhetorical  ex- 
position, to  accentuate  the  sills  of  the  arcades,  to  define 
and  refine  their  arches,  to  emphasize  the  continuous  line 
of  the  abacus,  and  especially  to  mark  the  summit  of  the 
sloping  basement,  which  now  is  merged  into  the  plane 
of  the  main  wall,  without  the  suggestion  of  a plinth.  It 
is  conceivable  that  an  architect  might,  by  the  skilful  em- 
ployment of  color,  so  treat  a front,  without  the  least  pro- 
jection or  recess  from  top  to  bottom  or  from  end  to  end, 
as  to  make  us  forget  to  deplore  the  absence  of  mould- 
ings. Some  interesting  attempts  in  that  direction  have, 
in  fact,  been  made,  and  complete  success  in  such  an  at- 
tempt would  be  entitled  to  the  praise  of  a tour  de  force. 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


I5S 

But  when  in  a monochromatic  wall  the  designer  omits 
the  members  that  should  express  and  emphasize  and 
adorn  his  structural  dispositions  without  offering  any 
substitute  for  them,  his  building  will  appear,  as  this 
dwelling  appears,  a work  merely  “blocked  out”  and  left 
unfinished;  and  if  it  be  tire  work  of  a highly  endowed 
and  highly  accomplished  designer  like  Richardson,  the 
deficiency  must  be  set  down  merely  as  an  unlucky  ca- 
price. We  have  been  speaking  exclusively  of  the  longer 
front, since  it  is  manifest  that  the  shorter  shares  its  incom- 
pleteness, without  the  partial  compensation  of  a strong 
and  striking  composition,  which  would  carry  off  much 
unsuccessful  detail,  though  it  is  not  strong  enough  to 
carry  off  the  lack  of  detail,  even  with  the  powerful  and 
simple  roof  that  covers  the  whole — in  itself  an  admira- 
ble and  entirely  satisfactory  piece  of  work. 

Capriciousness  may  with  as  much  justice  be  charged 
upon  the  only  other  example  of  Richardson’s  domestic 
architecture  in  Chicago,  which,  even  more  than  the 
house  we  have  been  considering,  arrests  attention  and 
prevents  apathy,  but  which  also  seems  even  more  from 


DWELLING  IN  PRAIRIE  AVENUE. 
H.  H.  Richardson,  Architect. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


r59 


the  purpose  of  domestic  architecture.  Upon  the  longer 
though  less  conspicuous  front  it  lacks  any  central  and 
controlling  motive;  and  on  the  shorter  and  more  con- 
spicuous, this  motive,  about  which  the  architect  so  sel- 
dom leaves  the  beholder  in  any  doubt,  is  obscured  by 
the  addition  at  one  end  of  a series  of  openings  irrele- 
vant to  it,  having  no  counterpart  upon  the  other,  and 
serving  to  weaken  at  a critical  point  the  wall,  the  em- 
phasis of  whose  massiveness  and  lateral  expanse  may  be 
said  to  be  the  whole  purport  of  the  design,  to  which  ev- 
erything else  is  quite  ruthlessly  sacrificed.  For  this  the 
building  is  kept  as  low  as  possible,  insomuch  that  the 
ridge  of  its  rather  steep  roof  only  reaches  the  level  of 
the  third  story  of  the  adjoining  house.  For  this  the 
openings  are  diminished  in  size  upon  both  sides,  inso- 
much that  they  become  mere  orifices  for  the  admission 
of  light,  and  in  number  upon  the  long  side,  insomuch 
that  the  designer  seems  to  regard  them  as  annoying  in- 
terruptions to  his  essay  in  the  treatment  of  blank  wall. 
A granite  wall  over  a hundred  and  fifty  feet  long,  as  in 
the  side  of  this  dwelling,  almost  unbroken,  and  with  its 
structure  clearly  exhibited,  is  sure  enough  to  arrest  and 
strike  the  beholder;  and  so  is  the  shorter  front,  in  which 
the  same  treatment  prevails,  with  a little  more  of  ungra- 
cious concession  to  practical  needs  in  the  more  numer- 
ous openings;  but  the  beholder  can  scarcely  accept 
the  result  as  an  eligible  residence.  The  treatment  is, 
even  more  strictly  than  in  the  house  on  the  north  side, 
an  exposition  of  masonry.  There  is  here,  to  be  sure, 
some  decorative  detail  in  the  filling  of  the  head  of  the 
doorway  and  in  the  sill  above  it,  but  this  detail  is  so  mi- 
nute, in  the  case  of  the  egg-and-dart  that  adorns  the  sill, 
so  microscopic,  that  it  does  not  count  at  all  in  the  gen- 
eral effect.  A moulding  that  does  count  in  the  general 
effect,  and  that  vindicates  itself  at  the  expense  of  the 


i6o 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


structural  features  not  thus  developed,  is  the  main 
cornice,  an  emphatic  and  appropriate  profile.  In  this 
building  there  seems  to  be  a real  attempt  to  supply  the 
place  of  mouldings  by  modifications  of  the  masonry, 
which  in  the  other  forms  an  unvaried  reticulation  over 
the  whole  surface.  In  this  not  only  are  the  horizontal 
joints  accentuated,  and  the  vertical  joints  slurred  so  as 
to  assist  very  greatly  in  the  emphasis  of  length,  but  the 
courses  that  are  structurally  of  unusual  importance,  the 
sills  and  lintels  of  the  openings,  are  doubled  in  width, 
thus  strongly  belting  the  building  at  their  several  levels. 
Here  again  a device  that  needs  only  to  be  expressed  in 
modelling  to  answer  an  artistic  purpose  fails  to  make  up 
for  the  absence  of  modelling.  The  merits  of  the  build- 
ing as  a building,  however,  are  much  effaced  when  it 
is  considered  as  a dwelling,  and  the  structure  ceases  to 
be  defensible,  except,  indeed,  in  a military  sense.  The 
whole  aspect  of  the  exterior  is  so  gloomy  and  forbid- 
ding and  unhomelike  that  but  for  its  neighborhood  one 
would  infer  its  purpose  to  be  not  domestic,  but  penal. 
Lovelace  has  assured  us  that  “ stone  walls  do  not  a prison 
make,”  but  when  a building  consists  as  exclusively  as 
possible  of  bare  stone  walls,  it  irresistibly  suggests  a 
place  of  involuntary  seclusion,  even  though  minds  espe- 
cially “ innocent  and  quiet  ” might  take  it  for  a hermit- 
age. Indeed,  if  one  were  to  take  it  for  a dwelling  ex- 
pressive  of  the  character  of  its  inmates,  he  must  suppose 
it  to  be  the  abode  of  a recluse  or  of  a misanthrope,  though 
when  Timon  secures  a large  plot  upon  a fashionable  av- 
enue, and  erects  a costly  building  to  show  his  aversion 
to  the  society  of  his  kind,  he  exposes  the  sincerity  of  his 
misanthropical  sentiments  to  suspicion.  Assuming  that 
the  owner  does  not  profess  such  sentiments,  but  is  much 
like  his  fellow-citizens,  the  character  of  his  abode  must 
be  referred  to  a whim  on  the  part  of  his  architect — a 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE  jgi 

Titanic,  or  rather  a Gargantuan  freak.  For  there  is  at 
least  nothing  petty  or  puerile  about  the  design  of  these 
houses.  They  bear  an  unmistakably  strong  and  indi- 
vidual stamp,  and  failures  as,  upon  the  whole,  they  must 
be  called,  they  really  increase  the  admiration  aroused 
by  their  author’s  successes  for  the  power  of  design  that 
can  make  even  wilful  error  so  interesting. 

That  romantic  architecture  is  not  inconsistent  with 
the  suggestion  of  a home,  or  with  the  conditions  of  a 
modern  town-house,  is  shown,  if  it  needed  any  showing,  by 
a dwelling  that  adjoins  the  first  of  the  Richardson  houses, 
and  that  nobody  who  is  familiar  with  Mr.  W.  K.  Van- 
derbilt’s house  or  with  the  Marquand  houses  in  New 
York  would  need  to  be  told  was  the  work  of  Mr.  Hunt. 
It  recalls  particularly  the  Vanderbilt  house,  being  in  the 
same  monochrome  of  light  gray,  and  repeating,  though 
with  a wide  variation,  some  of  the  same  features,  espe- 
cially the  corbelled  tourelle.  This  is  here  placed  to 
much  better  advantage  at  a salient  instead  of  a re- 
entrant angle;  it  is  more  happily  proportioned;  the  cor- 
belling, not  continuous,  but  broken  by  the  wall  of  the 
angle,  is  very  cleverly  managed,  and  the  whole  feature 
is  as  picturesque  and  spirited  as  it  is  unmistakably  do- 
mestic in  expression.  The  house  does  not  exhibit  the 
same  profusion  of  sculptural  ornament  as  the  earlier 
work  it  recalls,  nor  is  there  so  much  of  strictly  archi- 
tectural detail.  By  this  comparison,  indeed,  one  would 
be  inclined  to  call  this  treatment  severe ; but  it  is  prod- 
igality itself  in  comparison  with  its  neighbor.  This  lat- 
ter comparison  is  especially  instructive  because  in  the 
block,  as  a matter  of  mere  mass  and  outline,  Mr.  Rich- 
ardson’s composition,  considerably  simpler,  is  also  pretty 
distinctly  more  forcible  than  that  of  Mr.  Hunt,  by  rea- 
son of  its  central  and  dominating  feature,  and  especially 
by  reason  of  the  completeness  with  which  it  is  united 


21 


162 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


by  the  simple  and  unbroken  roof ; whereas  the  criti- 
cism already  passed  upon  the  Vanderbilt  house,  that  it 
grows  weak  above  tire  cornice  line,  is  applicable,  though 
in  a less  degree,  to  its  author’s  later  work.  The  vari- 
ous roofs  required  by  the  substructure,  and  carried  to 
the  same  height,  have  been  imperfectly  brought  into 
subjection,  and  their  grouping  does  not  make  a single 
or  a total  impression.  Taking  the  fronts  by  themselves, 
considering  them  with  reference  to  the  distribution  of 
voids  and  solids,  we  must  omit  the  minor  front  of  Mr. 
Richardson’s  work  as  scarcely  showing  any  composi- 
tion ; but  the  principal  front  is  much  more  striking  and 
memorable,  doubtless,  than  either  elevation  of  Mr.  Hunt’s 
design,  carefully  and  successfully  as  both  of  them  have 
been  studied.  Yet  there  is  no  question  at  all  that  the 
latter  is  by  far  the  more  admirable  and  effective  exam- 
ple of  domestic  architecture,  because  the  possibilities  of 
expression  that  inhere  in  the  masses  are  in  the  one  case 
brought  out,  and  left  latent  in  the  other. 

Of  course,  Mr.  Hunt’s  work  is  no  more  characteris- 
tically Chicagoan  than  Mr.  Richardson’s,  and,  of  course, 
the  dwellings  we  have  been  considering  are  too  large 
and  costly  to  be  fairly  representative  of  the  domestic 
architecture  of  any  city.  The  rule,  to  which  there  are 
as  few  exceptions  in  Chicago  as  elsewhere,  is  that  archi- 
tecture is  regarded  as  a superfluity  that  only  the  rich 
can  afford  ; whereas  a genuine  and  general  interest  in  it 
would  require  the  man  who  was  able  to  own  a house  at  all 
to  insist  upon  what  the  tailors  call  a “custom-made” 
dwelling,  and  would  lead  him  equally  to  reject  a ready- 
made  residence  and  a misfit.  In  that  case  we  should 
see  in  single  houses  of  moderate  size  and  moderate  cost 
the  same  evidence  of  affectionate  study  as  in  houses  of 
greater  pretensions,  even  though  the  design  might  be 
evinced  only  in  the  careful  and  thoughtful  proportion- 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 

ing  and  adjustment  of  the  parts.  This  is  still  a sight  as 
rare  as  it  is  welcome  in  any  American  city,  though  it  is 
less  rare  in  cities  of  the  second  and  third  class  than  in 
cities  of  the  first.  Chicago  has  its  share,  but  no  more 
than  its  share,  of  instances  in  which  the  single  street 
front  of  a modest  dwelling  has  been  thought  worthy  of 
all  the  pains  that  could  be  given  to  it.  Of  one  such 
instance  in  Chicago  an  illustration  is  given,  and  it  is 
somewhat  saddening  to  one  who  would  like  to  find  in  it 


FRONT  IN  DEARBORN  AVENUE. 
John  Addison,  Architect. 


164 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


an  evidence  of  intelligent  lay  interest  in  architecture  to 
be  informed  that  it  is  the  residence  of  its  architect. 

Upon  the  whole,  the  domestic  architecture  of  the 
town  has  few  local  characteristics,  besides  those  already 
mentioned,  which  are  due  to  local  conditions  rather  than 
to  local  preferences.  The  range  of  building  material  is 
wide,  and  includes  a red  sandstone  from  Lake  Superior 
that  has  not  yet  made  its  way  into  the  Eastern  cities,  of 
a more  positive  tint  than  any  in  general  use  there.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  whole  continent  has  been  laid  under 
tribute  for  Chicago.  The  green  “ Chester  serpentine  ” 
which  one  encounters  so  often  in  Philadelphia  — and 
generally  with  regret,  though  in  combination  it  may  be- 
come very  attractive — cpiite  unknown  in  New  York  as 
it  is,  is  not  uncommon  in  the  residential  quarters  of  Chi- 
cago. Another  material  much  commoner  here  than 
elsewhere  is  the  unhewn  bowlder  that  Mr.  Richardson 
employed  in  the  fantastic  lodge  at  North  Easton,  which 
was  one  of  his  happiest  performances.  In  a long  and 
low  structure  like  that  the  defects  of  the  material  are 
much  less  manifest  than  when  it  is  attempted  to  employ 
it  in  a design  of  several  stories.  One  of  the  most  inter- 
esting of  these  attempts  is  illustrated  herewith.  The 
architect  has  wisely  simplified  his  design  to  the  utmost 
to  conform  to  the  intractability  of  his  material,  and  with 
equal  wisdom  has  marked  with  strong  belts  the  division 
of  his  stories.  But  in  spite  of  its  ruggedness  the  wall 
looks  weak,  since  it  is  plain  that  there  is  no  bonding, 
and  that  it  is  not  properly  a piece  of  masonry,  but  a layer 
of  highly  magnified  concrete,  which  owes  its  stability 
only  to  the  cohesion  of  the  cement,  and  to  give  the  as- 
surance of  being  a trustworthy  wall  needs  to  be  framed 
in  a conspicuous  quoin ing  of  unquestionable  masonry. 

One  other  trait  is  common  enough  among  such  of  the 
dwellings  of  Chicago  as  have  architectural  pretensions  to 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


165 


A HOUSE  OF  BOWLDERS. 
Burnham  & Root,  Architects. 


be  remarked,  and  that  is  the  prevalence  of  Byzantine 
carving.  This  is  not  really  a Chicagoan  characteristic. 
If  it  is  especially  noticeable  here,  it  is  because  Chicago 
is  so  new,  and  it  is  in  the  newer  quarters  of  older  towns 
that  it  is  to  be  seen.  It  is  quite  as  general  on  the  “ West 
side”  of  New  York.  Its  prevalence  is  again  in  great  part 
due  to  the  influence  of  Richardson,  and  one  is  inclined 
to  welcome  it  as  at  least  tending  to  provide  a common 
and  understood  way  of  working  for  architectural  carvers, 
and  the  badge  of  something  like  a common  style  for  build- 
ings that  have  little  else  in  common.  The  facility  with 
which  its  spiky  leafage  can  be  used  for  surface  decora- 
tion tempts  designers  to  provide  surfaces  for  its  decora- 
tion, in  such  structural  features  as  capitals  and  corbels, 
at  the  cost  of  the  modelling  which  is  so  much  more  ex- 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


1 66 

pressive  and  so  much  more  troublesome,  when  a mere 
cushion  will  do  better  as  a basis  for  Byzantine  orna- 
ment. 

For  the  rest,  the  clever  and  ingenious  features  which 
one  often  comes  upon  in  the  residential  streets  of  Chi- 
cago, and  the  thoroughly  studied  fronts  that  one  comes 


A BYZANTINE  CORBEL. 
Henry  Ives  Cobb,  Architect. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


167 

upon  so  much  more  seldom,  would  excite  neither  more 
nor  less  surprise  if  they  were  encountered  in  the  streets 
of  any  older  American  town.  But  from  what  has  been 
said  it  will  be  seen  that  in  every  department  of  building, 
except  only  the  ecclesiastical,  Chicago  has  already  ex- 
amples to  show  that  should  be  of  great  value  to  its  future 
growth  in  stimulating  its  architects  to  produce  and  in 
teaching  its  public  to  appreciate. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 

II.— ST.  PAUL  AND  MINNEAPOLIS 

TT  is  just  thirty  years  since  Anthony  Trollope  ascend- 
ed  the  Mississippi  to  the  head  of  navigation  and  the 
Falls  of  St.  Anthony,  and  recorded  his  impressions  of 
the  works  of  nature  and  of  man  along  the  shores  of  that 
river.  As  might  perhaps  have  been  expected,  he  ad- 
mired with  enthusiasm  the  works  of  nature,  and  as  might 
certainly  have  been  expected,  he  found  little  to  admire 
in  the  handiwork  of  man.  “ I protest  that  of  all  the 
river  scenery  that  I know,  that  of  the  upper  Mississippi 
is  by  far  the  finest  and  the  most  continued.  One  thinks, 
of  course,  of  the  Rhine ; but,  according  to  my  idea  of 
beauty,  the  Rhine  is  nothing  to  the  upper  Mississippi. 
. . . The  idea  constantly  occurs  that  some  point  on  every 
hill-side  would  form  the- most  charming  site  ever  yet 
chosen  for  a noble  residence.”  Thus  Trollope  of  the 
upper  Mississippi,  and  thus  again  of  the  “ twin  cities  ” 
that  are  the  subject  of  our  present  inquisition : “ St. 
Paul  contains  about  14,000  inhabitants,  and,  like  all 
other  American  towns,  is  spread  over  a surface  of  ground 
adapted  to  the  accommodation  of  a very  extended  pop- 
ulation. As  it  is  belted  on  one  side  by  the  river,  and 
on  the  other  by  the  bluffs  which  accompany  the  course 
of  the  river,  the  site  is  pretty,  and  almost  romantic.”  The 
other  “ twin  ” is  so  much  the  later  born  that  to  few  Min- 
neapolitans does  it  ever  occur  that  it  had  even  seen  the 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


169 

light  in  1861.  “Going  on  from  Minnehaha,  we  came  to 
Minneapolis,  at  which  place  there  is  a fine  suspension- 
bridge  across  the  river,  just  above  the  Falls  of  St.  An- 
thony, and  leading  to  the  town  of  that  name.  Till  I got 
there  I could  hardly  believe  that  in  these  days  there 
should  be  a living  village  called  Minneapolis  by  living 
men.  I presume  I should  describe  it  as  a town,  for  it 
has  a municipality  and  a post-office,  and  of  course  a large 
hotel.  The  interest  of  the  place,  however,  is  in  the  saw- 
mills.” 

I do  not  mean  to  celebrate  again  the  growth  of  St. 
Paul  and  Minneapolis  from  these  small  beginnings,  which 
is  the  marvel  of  even  the  marvellous  West.  But  for  our 
immediate  purpose  it  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  not 
only  the  rapidity  of  the  growth  of  the  two  cities,  but  the 
intensity  of  the  rivalry  between  them — a rivalry  which 
the  stranger  hardly  comprehends,  however  much  he  may 
have  heard  of  it,  until  he  has  seen  the  workings  of  it  on 
the  spot.  Indeed,  it  is  scarcely  accurate  to  describe  the 
genesis  of  Minneapolis,  in  particular,  as  a growth  at  all. 
St.  Paul  has  been  developed  from  the  frontier  trading- 
post  of  the  earlier  days  by  an  evolution,  the  successive 
stages  of  which  have  left  their  several  records ; but  Min- 
neapolis has  risen  like  an  exhalation,  or,  to  adopt  even 
a mustier  comparison,  has  sprung  from  the  heads  of  its 
projectors  full-panoplied  in  brick  and  mortar.  “ The 
twin  cities  on  either  bank,”  remarks  the  historiogra- 
pher of  the  Minneapolis  Exposition  of  1886,  “ amid  many 
ups  and  downs — the  ups  always  predominating — pegged 
along  steadily  towards  greatness.”  The  phrase  is  rather 
picturesque  than  graphic,  for  nothing  could  be  less  de- 
scriptive of  the  mode  of  locomotion  of  Minneapolis  than 
a steady  pegging  along.  It  has  been  an  affair  of  leaps 
and  bounds.  There  are  traces  of  the  village  that  Trol- 
lope saw,  and  there  are  the  towering  structures  of  a mod- 
22 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


I 70 

ern  city,  and  there  is  nothing  between.  In  this  electric 
air,  where  there  is  so  little  “precipitation  ” in  the  atmos- 
phere and  so  much  in  everything  else;  where  “the  flux 
of  mortal  things  ” is  not  a generalization  of  the  mind, 
but  a palpable  fact  of  daily  experience ; where  antiquity 
means  the  day  before  yesterday,  and  posterity  the  day 
after  to-morrow,  the  present  is  the  most  contemptible  of 
tenses,  and  men  inevitably  come  to  think  and  live  and 
build  in  the  future-perfect.  A ten-story  building  in  a 
ten-acre  lot  requires  explanation,  and  this  seems  to  be 
the  explanation— this  and  the  adjacency  of  the  hated 
rival.  In  St.  Paul  the  elevator  came  as  a needed  factor 
in  commercial  architecture,  since  the  strip  of  shore  to 
which  the  town  was  confined  in  Trollope’s  time  still  lim- 
its and  cramps  the  business-quarter,  and  leaves  only  the 
vertical  dimension  available  for  expansion.  Towering 
buildings  are  the  normal  outcome  of  such  a situation. 
Minneapolis,  on  the  other  hand,  occupies  a table-land 
above  the  river,  which  at  present  is  practically  unlimited. 
Although,  of  course,  every  growing  or  grown  town  must 
have  a most  frequented  part — a centre  where  land  is 
costlier  than  elsewhere,  and  buildings  rise  higher — the 
altitude  of  the  newest  and  tallest  structures  of  Minne- 
apolis could  scarcely  be  explained  without  reference  to 
the  nearness  of  St.  Paul,  and  the  intensity  of  the  local 
pride  born  of  that  nearness.  If  the  physical  necessities 
of  the  case  prescribed  ten-story  buildings  in  .St.  Paul, 
the  moral  necessity  of  not  being  outdone  would  pre- 
scribe twelve-story  buildings  for  Minneapolis.  In  point 
of  fact,  it  is  to  a Minneapolitan  architect  that  we  owe 
the  first  project  of  an  office  building  which  bears  the 
same  relation  to  the  ordinary  elevator  building  of  our 
cities  that  this  bears  to  the  five  or  six  story  edifice  that 
the  topographical  and  commercial  conditions  would  indi- 
cate as  suited  to  the  actual  needs  of  Minneapolis.  The 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


I 71 


project  remains  on  paper,  though  it  is  some  years  since 
it  startled  the  architects  of  the  country,  and  an  interest- 
ing project  it  is  in  an  architectural  sense  ; but  it  is  none 
the  less  representative  of  the  local  genius  than  if  it  had 
been  executed. 

Evidently  there  could  be  no  better  places  than  the 
twin  cities  to  study  the  development  of  Western  archi- 
tecture, or  rather  to  ascertain  whether  there  is  any  such 
thing.  There  seems  to  be  among  the  Western  lay  pop- 
ulations a faith  that  there  is,  which  is  none  the  less  firm 
for  being  a trifle  vague,  and  this  faith  is  shared  by  some 
of  the  practitioners  of  architecture  in  the  West.  In  the 
inscrutable  workings  of  our  official  architecture,  one  of 
these  gentlemen  came  to  be  appointed  a few  years  ago 
the  supervising  architect  of  the  Treasury.  It  is  a meas- 
ure of  the  extent  and  intelligence  of  the  national  inter- 
est in  the  art  that  this  functionary,  with  little  more  than 
the  official  status  of  a clerk,  and  with  no  guarantee  that 
he  has  any  professional  status  whatever,  has  little  less 
than  the  aediliary  powers  of  an  Augustus.  To  have 
found  a city  of  brick  and  to  have  left  a city  of  marble  is 
a boast  that  more  than  one  supervising  architect  could 
have  paraphrased  in  declaring  that  he  found  the  gov- 
ernment architecture  Renaissance  and  he  left  it  Gothic, 
or  that  he  found  it  Gothic  and  he  left  it  nondescript, 
while  each  successive  incumbent  could  have  declared 
that  he  found  it  and  left  it  without  architectural  tradi- 
tions and  without  architectural  restraints.  The  ambi- 
tion of  the  architect  immediately  in  question  was  not 
sectarian  so  much  as  sectional.  To  him  it  seemed  that 
a bureau  had  too  many  traditions  which  to  other  students 
seemed  to  have  none  at  all.  Not  personally  addicted  to 
swearing  to  the  words  of  any  master,  he  considered  that 
the  influence  of  authority  in  his  office  was  much  too 
strong.  He  was  himself  from  the  remote  West,  and  in 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


I 72 

an  interview  setting  forth  his  hopes  and  purposes,  shortly 
after  lie  came  into  the  office  from  which  he  was  shortly 
to  go  out,  he  explained  that  “ Eastern  ” conventionali- 
ties had  had  altogether  too  much  sway  in  the  previous 
conduct  of  the  office,  and  that  he  meant  to  embody 
“Western  ideas”  in  the  public  buildings.  In  the  brief 
interval  before  his  retirement  he  designed  many  monu- 
ments from  which  one  should  be  able  to  derive  some 
notion  of  Western  architectural  ideas,  and  one  of  these 
is  the  government  building  in  Minneapolis.  This  edi- 
fice is  mainly  remarkable  for  the  multitude  of  ill-assort- 
ed and  unadjusted  features  which  it  exhibits,  especially 
for  the  “ grand  choice  ” of  pediments  which  its  fronts 
present — pediments  triangular  and  curved,  pediments 
closed  and  broken — and  for  the  variety  and  multiplic- 
ity of  the  cupolas  and  lanterns  and  crestings  by  which 
the  sky-line  is  animated  into  violent  agitation.  The 
features  themselves  cannot  be  “Western,”  since  they 
are  by  no  means  novel,  the  most  recent  of  them  dating 
back  to  Sir  Christopher  Wren,  and  it  must  be  the  com- 
bination or  the  remarkable  profusion  of  “ things  ” that 
constitutes  the  novelty  and  the  Westernness  which  it 
was  the  mission  of  the  author  to  introduce  into  our 
public  architecture.  Unfortunately  there  is  nothing 
that  can  fairly  be  called  combination,  for  the  composi- 
tion is  but  an  asrsrlomeration,  “a  fortuitous  concourse 
of  atoms.”  We  have  all  seen  in  the  Eastern  cities  too 
many  buildings  of  which  crudity  and  recklessness  were 
the  characteristics,  and  which  were  unstudied  accumu- 
lations of  familiar  forms,  to  assume  that  crudity  and 
recklessness  in  architecture  are  especially  “ Western 
ideas.”  If  they  be  so,  then  assuredly  “Western  ” is  an 
opprobrious  epithet,  not  lightly  and  unadvisedly  to  be 
applied  to  any  structure. 

There  is  perhaps  no  other  building  in  either  city 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


1 73 


equally  costly  and  conspicuous  which  merits  it  in  the 
same  degree  with  the  government  building  at  Minneap- 
olis, at  least  in  an  architectural  sense.  An  enterprising- 
owner  in  the  same  city  has  procured  the  materials  for  a 
new  building  by  permitting  each  contributor  to  inscribe 
his  contribution  with  the  name  of  the  material  furnished 
by  him,  and  a statement  of  its  good  qualities,  and  these 
incised  advertisements  undoubtedly  give  a local  color 
to  the  structure  ; but  this  Westernness  is  scarcely  archi- 
tectural. The  City  Hall  and  Court-house  in  St.  Paul 
is  a large  and  conspicuous  building,  the  more  conspicu- 
ous for  being  isolated  in  the  midst  of  an  open  square; 
and  it  is  unfortunate  in  design,  or  the  absence  of  it,  the 
arrangement  of  its  voids  and  solids  being  quite  unstud- 
ied and  casual,  and  the  aggregation  quite  failing  to  con- 
stitute a whole.  There  are  by  no  means  so  many  feat- 
ures in  it  as  in  the  government  building  at  Minneapo- 
lis, nor  are  they  classic  ; but  the  architect  has  introduced 
more  “ things  ” than  he  was  able  to  handle,  and  they 
are  equally  irrelevant  to  the  pile  and  to  each  other,  es- 
pecially the  tower  that  was  intended  to  be  the  culmi- 
nating feature  of  the  composition,  but  which  fails  to  fulfil 
its  purpose  from  any  point  of  view,  crowning  as  it  does 
a recessed  anqle  of  the  front.  This  also  is  a cono-eries 
of  unrelated  and  unadjusted  parts,  and,  in  the  light  of 
the  illustrations  of  his  meaning  furnished  by  our  official 
spokesman,  this  also  may  be  admitted  to  be  character- 
istically W n.  The  same  admission  may  reluctantly 

be  made  concerning  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  in  St. 
Paul,  which  consists  architecturally  of  two  very  busy 
and  bustling  fronts,  compiled  of  “features”  that  do  not 
make  up  a physiognomy,  and  which  stand  upon  a mas- 
sive sash  frame  of  plate-glass.  As  a matter  of  fact,  these 
things  have  their  counterparts  in  the  East,  only  there 
they  are  not  referred  to  the  geography,  but  to  the  illit- 


174 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


eracy  or  insensibility  of  the  designer,  and  this  classifi- 
cation seems  simpler,  and,  upon  the  whole,  more  satis- 
factory. 

Minneapolis  has  a compensation  for  its  newness  in  the 
fact  that  when  its  public  buildings  came  to  be  projected, 
the  fashion  of  such  edifices  as  these  had  passed  away. 
If  the  work  of  Mr.  Richardson  has  been  much  misun- 
derstood, as  I tried  to  point  out  in  speaking  of  the  do- 
mestic architecture  of  Chicago,  if  its  accidents  have  been 
mistaken  by  admiring  disciples  for  its  essence,  even  if 
its  essential  and  admirable  qualities  do  not  always  suf- 
fice to  make  it  available  as  a model,  it  is  necessary  only 
to  consider  such  buildings  as  have  just  been  mentioned 
to  perceive  how  beneficial,  upon  the  whole,  his  influence 
has  been,  for  it  has  at  least  sufficed  to  make  such  build- 
ings impossible — impossible,  at  least,  to  be  done  by  ar- 
chitects who  have  any  pretensions  to  be  “ in  the  move- 
ment ” — and  it  is  hard  to  conceive  that  they  can  be  suc- 
ceeded by  anything  so  bad.  The  City  Hall  of  Minne- 
apolis, for  instance,  was  projected  but  a few  years  later 
than  its  government  building,  but  in  the  interval  Rich- 
ardson’s influence  had  been  at  work.  That  influence  is 
betrayed  both  in  the  accepted  design  now  in  course  of 
execution  and  in  the  other  competitive  designs,  and  it 
has  resulted  in  a specific  resemblance  to  the  public 
building  at  Pittsburgh,  which  its  author  professed  his 
hope  to  make  “ a dignified  pile  of  rocks.”  The  varia- 
tions which  the  authors  of  the  Minneapolis  City  Hall 
have  introduced  in  the  scheme  they  have  reproduced  in 
its  general  massing,  and  in  its  most  conspicuous  feat- 
ures are  not  all  improvements.  By  the  introduction  of 
grouped  openings  into  its  solid  shaft  the  tower  of  Pitts- 
burgh is  shorn  of  much  of  its  power;  nor  can  the  substi- 
tution be  commended  in  its  upper  stage  of  a modifica- 
tion of  the  motive  employed  by  Richardson  in  Trinity, 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


1 75 


Boston,  and  derived  by  him  from  Salamanca,  for  the  sim- 
pler treatment  used  in  the  prototype  of  this  building  as 
the  culminating  feature  of  a stark  and  lofty  tower.  The 
far  greater  elaboration  of  the  corner  pavilions  of  the 
principal  fronts,  also,  though  in  part  justified  by  the 
greater  tractability  of  the  material  here  employed,  tends 
rather  to  confusion  than  to  enrichment.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  more  subdued  treatment  of  the  curtain  wall 
between  the  tower  and  the  pavilions  gives  greater  value 
and  detachment  to  both,  and  is  thus  an  advance  upon 
the  prototype ; and  the  central  gable  of  the  subordinate 
front  is  distinctly  more  successful  than  the  correspond- 
ing feature  of  Pittsburgh,  the  archway,  withdrawn  be- 
tween two  protecting  towers,  of  which  the  suggestion 
comes  from  mediaeval  military  architecture.  Observe, 
however,  that  the  derivation  of  the  general  scheme  of 
the  building  and  of  its  chief  features  from  an  earlier 
work  is  by  no  means  an  impeachment  of  the  architect’s 
originality,  provided  the  precedent  he  chooses  be  really 
applicable  to  his  problem,  and  provided  he  analyze  it 
instead  of  reproducing  it  without  analysis.  In  what 
else  does  progress  consist  than  in  availing  one’s  self  of 
the  labor  of  one’s  predecessors  ? If  the  Grecian  build- 
ers had  felt  the  pressure  of  the  modern  demand  for  nov- 
elty, and  had  endeavored  to  comply  with  it  by  making 
dispositions  radically^  new,  instead  of  refining  upon  the 
details  of  an  accepted  type,  or  if  the  mediaeval  builders 
had  done  the  same  thing,  it  is  manifest  that  the  typical 
temple  or  the  typical  cathedral  would  never  have  come 
to  be  built,  that  we  should  have  had  no  Parthenon  and 
no  Cologne.  The  requirements  of  the  Minneapolis  build- 
ing, a court-house  and  town-hall,  are  nearly  enough  alike 
to  those  of  the  county  building  at  Pittsburgh  to  make  it 
credible  that  the  general  scheme  of  the  earlier  work  may, 
by  force  of  merit,  have  imposed  itself  upon  the  architect 


PUBLIC  LIBRARY,  MINNEAPOLIS. 

Long  & Kees,  Architects. 

of  the  later.  The  general  difference  of  treatment  is  the 
greater  richness  and  elaboration  of  the  newer  structure, 
and  this  is  a legitimate  consequence  of  the  substitution 
of  freestone  for  granite ; while  the  differences  of  detail 
and  the  introduction  at  Minneapolis  of  features  that  have 
no  counterpart  at  Pittsburgh  suffice  to  vindicate  the  de- 
signer from  the  reproach  of  having  followed  his  model 
thoughtlessly  or  with  servility.  So  far  as  can  be  judged 
from  the  drawings,  the  municipal  building  of  Minne- 
apolis, when  it  comes  to  be  finished,  will  be  a monu- 
ment of  which  the  Minneapolitans  will  have  a right  to 
be  proud,  for  better  reasons  than  mere  magnitude  and 
costliness. 

Another  work,  this  time  completely  executed,  by  the 
designers  of  the  City  Hall,  the  Public  Library  of  Minne- 
apolis, betrays  also  the  influence  of  Richardson.  The 
motive  of  the  principal  front,  an  arcade  bounded  by 
round  towers  and  surmounted  by  a story  of  blank  wall, 
was  pretty  evidently  suggested  by  his  unexecuted  de- 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


1 77 


sign  for  a similar  building  at  Buffalo.  The  precedent 
here  is  perhaps  not  so  directly  in  point,  seeing  that  the 
effectiveness  of  an  arcade  increases  with  its  length,  and 
in  a much  greater  ratio,  and  that  the  arcade  here  is  not 
only  much  shorter  than  in  the  projected  building,  but  is 
still  further  shortened  to  the  eye  by  being  heightened 
and  carried  through  two  stories.  The  towers,  too,  would 
have  been  more  effective  had  it  been  practicable  to  give 
greater  solidity  to  their  lower  stages.  Nevertheless,  the 
building  is  distinctly  successful,  and  its  most  successful 


ENTRANCE  TO  PUBLIC  LIBRARY,  MINNEAPOLIS. 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


feature,  the  gabled  centre  that  includes  the  entrance,  is 
one  which  illustrates  the  inventiveness  of  the  designers, 
as  well  as  their  power  of  judicious  selection  and  modifi- 
cation. 

As  was  remarked  in  the  paper  on  Chicago,  the  archi- 
tectural activity  of  the  West  is  not  largely  ecclesiastical, 
and  the  churches  are  for  the  most  part  as  near  to  tradi- 
tional models  as  their  designers  have  the  knowledge  to 
bring  them.  In  the  Eastern  States  a great  many  inter- 
esting essays  have  been  made  towards  solving  the  mod- 
ern problem  of  a church  in  which  the  pulpit  and  not  the 
altar  is  the  central  point  of  design,  while  yet  retaining 
an  ecclesiastical  expression.  There  is  an  edifice  in  St. 
Paul  called  “ the  People’s  Church,”  in  which  the  designer 
seems  purposely  to  have  avoided  an  ecclesiastical  expres- 
sion, and  to  have  un- 
dertaken to  typify  in 
brick  and  stone  the 
wild,  free  theology  of 
the  West.  He  has 
so  far  succeeded  that 
nobody  could  possi- 
bly take  the  result  of 
his  labors  for  a ch  urch 
in  the  usual  accepta- 
tion of  the  term,  but 
this  negative  attain- 
ment  does  not  yet 
constitute  a positive 
architectural  suc- 
cess. It  may  be  that 
Western  ideas  in 
theology  are  thus 
far  somewhat  too 
, w c » C sketchy  to  form  a 

J.  W.  Stevens,  Architect.  J 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


1 79 


basis  for  the  establishment  of  an  architectural  type, 
since  mere  negation  is  insusceptible  of  architectu- 
ral expression.  The  People’s  Church  does  not  lack, 
however,  many  of  the  qualities  that  should  belong  to 
every  building  as  a building,  apart  from  its  destination. 
In  spite  of  such  unhappy  freaks  as  that  by  which  the 
stone  basement  merges  into  the  brick  superstructure 
with  no  architectural  mark  of  the  transition,  and  cuts 
the  openings  quite  at  random,  or  as  that  by  which  the 
brick  wall,  for  a considerable  but  indefinite  extent,  is 
quite  promiscuously  aspersed  with  irregular  bits  of  stone, 
it  shows  a considerable  skill  in  the  placing  and  detailing 
of  features,  and  the  disposition  of  the  openings  gives  the 
principal  front  a grateful  sense  of  stability  and  repose. 
The  ample  entrances  designate  it  as  a place  of  popular 
assembly,  and  possibly  its  religious  purpose  may  be  ta- 
ken to  be  confessed,  though  somewhat  shamefacedly,  in 
the  wheel-window  at  the  centre  of  one  front,  and  the  tall 
traceried  opening  at  the  centre  of  the  other,  which  are 
the  only  relics  of  ecclesiastical  architecture  that  are  suf- 
fered to  appear.  It  is  evident  that  it  is  a “ People’s  ” 
something,  and  possibly  this  is  as  near  to  a specification 
of  its  purpose  as  the  neo-theologians  have  attained.  In 
this  case,  as  it  is  notoriously  difficult  for  a man  to  give 
expression  to  an  idea  of  which  he  is  not  possessed,  the 
architectural  ambiguity  is  assuredly  not  to  be  imputed 
to  the  architect. 

A Unitarian  church  in  Minneapolis  is  also  an  un- 
conventional specimen  of  church  architecture,  though 
it  could  not  be  taken  for  anything  but  a church,  and 
it  is  undeniably  a vigorous  performance,  consisting  of 
massive,  well-divided,  and  “ well-punched”  walls  in  a 
monochrome  of  dark-red  sandstone.  The  novelty  and 
the  unconventionality,  however,  seem,  both  in  compo- 
sition and  in  detail,  to  have  been  sought  rather  than 

O 


i8o 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


UNITARIAN  CHURCH,  MINNEAPOLIS. 

L.  S.  Buffington,  Architect. 

to  have  proceeded  from  the  conditions  of  the  problem, 
and  the  effect  is  so  far  marred  by  the  loss  of  the  natu- 
ralness and  straightforwardness  that  justify  a departure 
from  convention.  For  example,  even  in  a galleried 
church  the  division  into  two  stories  can  scarcely  be 
considered  the  primary  fact  of  the  building,  though 
this  division  is  the  primary  fact  of  this  design,  and  is 
emphasized  by  the  torus  that  is  the  most  conspicuous 
moulding.  Nevertheless,  there  is  much  felicity  in  the 
general  disposition  and  in  the  design  of  the  features, 
especially  in  the  open  fenestration  of  the  transept  gable, 
and  its  strong  contrast  with  the  solider  flanks  of  wall 
pierced  only  by  the  smaller  openings  that  indicate  the 
gallery  staircases,  the  slope  of  which  is  also  expressed 
in  the  masonry  of  the  wall  itself ; and  the  low  polygonal 
tower  effectually  unites  and  dominates  the  two  fronts. 
The  innovation  in  the  treatment  of  detail,  by  which 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE  xgr 

what  is  commonly  the  “wrought  work”  of  a building 
in  facile  sandstone  is  left  rough-faced,  is  a caprice  that 
seems  also  to  proceed  from  the  pursuit  of  novelty,  and 
that  gains  nothing  in  vigor  for  what  it  loses  in  refine- 
ment. A rough-faced  moulding  seems  to  be  a contra- 
diction in  terms;  yet  here  not  only  are  the  mouldings 
rough-faced,  but  also  the  columns  and  colonnettes,  and 
the  corbelled  pinnacles  that  detach  the  tower  and  the 
gables,  and  it  is  only  in  the  copings  of  these  that  the 
asperities  of  the  sandstone  are  mitigated.  Slovenliness 
is  not  vigor,  and  in  the  coarsening  of  this  detail  the  de- 
signer, in  spite  of  having  produced  a vigorous  and  in- 
teresting work,  exposes  himself  to  the  critical  amenity 
bestowed  by  Dryden  upon  Elkanah  Settle,  that  “ his 
style  is  boisterous  and  rough-hewn.” 

A more  conventional  and  a quite  unmistakable  ex- 
ample of  church  building  is  a Presbyterian  church  in 
St.  Paul,  which  follows  the  established  ecclesiastical 
type,  albeit  with  a recognition  of  the  modern  demand 
that  a church  shall  be  a good  place  in  which  to  preach 
and  to  be  preached  to — a demand  which  here,  as  often 
elsewhere,  is  met  by  shortening  the  arms  of  the  cruci- 
form plan  until  the  church  is  virtually  limited  to  the 
crossing.  It  is  no  disparagement  to  the  present  design 
to  say  that  in  its  general  composition  it  seems  to  have 
been  suggested  by — and  at  any  rate  it  suggests — an 
early  and  interesting  work  of  Mr.  Richardson’s,  a church 
in  Springfield,  Massachusetts,  upon  which  it  improves  at 
some  points,  notably  in  the  emphatic  exposition  of  the 
masonic  structure.  At  other  points  the  variation  is 
not  so  successful.  The  tower  at  Springfield,  with  its 
attached  turret,  the  entrance  arch  at  its  base,  and  the 
broach  spire  with  pinnacles  detached  over  the  squinches, 
is  a very  vigorous  piece  of  design.  In  the  correspond- 
ing feature  at  St.  Paul,  the  relation  between  the  two 


182 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


PRESBYTERIAN  CHURCH,  ST.  PAUL. 

Gilbert  & Taylor,  Architects. 

superposed  open  stages  is  not  rhythmic  or  felicitous, 
though  each  in  itself  is  well  modelled,  and  the  transi- 
tion from  the  tower  to  the  shingled  spire,  marked  by 
shingled  pinnacles  without  a parapet,  is  distinctly  un- 
fortunate. For  all  that,  tire  church  is  a studied  and 
scholarly  performance. 

In  the  material  and  materializing  development  of  the 
West,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  chief  object  of  local 
pride  should  not  be  the  local  church,  but  the  local  hotel. 
“ Of  course  a large  hotel”  is  now,  as  in  Trollope’s  time, 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 

a necessary  ingredient  of  a local  “ boom.”  In  respect 
of  architecture  the  large  hotel  of  Minneapolis  has  a 
decided  advantage  over  the  large  hotel  of  St.  Paul. 
For  the  caravansary  of  the  older  town  is  an  example 
of  the  kind  of  secular  Victorian  Gothic  that  was  stimu- 
lated by  the  erection  of  Sir  Gilbert  Scott’s  Midland 
Hotel  in  London,  than  which  a less  eligible  model  could 
scarcely  be  put  before  an  untrained  designer,  since 
there  is  little  in  it  to  redeem  an  uneasy  and  uninterest- 
ing design  except  carefully  studied  and  carefully  ad- 
justed detail.  This  careful  study  and  adjustment  being 
omitted,  as  they  are  in  the  Hotel  Ryan,  and  a multi- 
plicity of  features  retained  and  still  further  confused 


WEST  HOTEL,  MINNEAPOLIS. 
L.  S.  Buffington,  Architect. 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


184 

by  a random  introduction  of  color,  the  result  is  a be- 
wildering and  saltatory  edifice  which  has  nothing  of 
interest  except  the  banded  piers  of  the  basement.  The 
West  Hotel  in  Minneapolis  is  a much  more  considera- 
ble structure.  It  has  a general  composition,  both  ver- 
tically and  laterally,  consisting  in  the  former  case  of 
three  divisions,  of  which  the  central  is  rather  the  most 
important,  and  in  the  latter  of  an  emphasis  of  the  centre 
and  the  ends  in  each  front  and  of  a subordination  of 
the  intervening  wall.  Here,  also,  there  is  a multiplicity 
of  features,  but  they  are  not  so  numerous  or  distributed 
so  much  at  random  as  to  prevent  us  from  seeing  the 
countenance,  for  undeniably  the  building  has  a physi- 
ognomy, and  that  is  in  itself  an  attainment.  In  artistic 
quality  the  features  are  very  various,  and  the  one  trait 
they  seem  to  have  in  common  is  a disregard  for  aca- 
demic correctness  or  for  purity  of  style.  This  is  con- 
spicuous in  the  main  entrance,  which  is  perhaps  the 
most  effective  and  successful  of  them,  being  a massive 
and  powerful  porte-cochere,  in  which,  however,  an  un- 
mistakably Gothic  dwarf  column  adjoins  a panelled 
pilaster,  which  as  unmistakably  owes  its  origin  to  the 
Renaissance,  and  a like  freedom  of  eclecticism  may  be 
observed  throughout  the  building.  In  its  degree  this 
freedom  may  be  Western,  though  a European  archi- 
tect would  be  apt  to  dismiss  it  indiscriminately  as 
American ; whereas  an  American  architect  would  be 
more  apt  to  ask  himself,  with  respect  to  any  particular 
manifestation  of  it,  whether  it  was  really,  and  not  only 
conventionally,  a solecism.  In  this  place  the  conjunc- 
tion does  not  strike  one  as  incongruous,  but  there  are 
other  features  in  which  the  incongruity  is  real,  such  as 
the  repeated  projections  of  long  and  ugly  corbels  to 
support  things  that  are  pretty  evidently  there  mainly 
for  the  purpose  of  being  supported.  The  impregnable 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


IS5 

criticism  of  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  that  the  picture 
would  have  been  better  if  the  artist  had  taken  more 
pains,  is  especially  applicable  to  this  edifice.  It  might 
have  been  both  chastened  and  clarified  by  severer  study; 
but  it  is  a compliment  to  it,  as  American  hotel  archi- 
tecture goes,  to  wish  that  it  had  been  more  carefully 
matured  by  its  designer  before  being  irretrievably  exe- 
cuted. The  interior  presents  several  interesting  points 
of  design  as  well  as  of  arrangement,  but  perhaps  it 
owes  its  chief  attractiveness  to  the  rich  and  quiet  deco- 
ration of  those  of  its  rooms  that  have  been  intrusted 
to  Mr.  Bradstreet,  who  for  many  years  has  been  acting 
as  an  evangelist  of  good  taste  to  the  two  cities,  and 
who  for  at  least  the  earlier  of  those  years  must  have 
felt  that  he  was  an  evangelist  in  partibus . The  inte- 
rior design  and  decoration  of  the  opera-house  at  Min- 
neapolis is  a yet  more  important  illustration  of  his  skill ; 
but  interiors  are  beyond  our  present  scope. 

For  public  works  other  than  public  buildings,  the 
two  cities  are  not  as  yet  very  notable.  The  site  of 
St.  Paul  makes  a bridge  across  the  river  at  this  point 
a very  conspicuous  object,  and  perhaps  nowhere  in  the 
world  would  a noble  and  monumental  bridge  be  more 
effective.  The  existing  bridges,  however,  are  works  of 
the  barest  utility,  apparently  designed  by  railroad  en- 
gineers with  no  thought  of  anything  beyond  efficiency 
and  economy,  and  they  are  annoying  interruptions  to 
the  panorama  unrolled  to  the  spectator  from  the  hill- 
side in  the  shining  reach  of  the  great  river.  Minneapo- 
lis has  been  more  fortunate  in  this  respect,  although 
the  river  by  no  means  plays  so  important  a part  in  its 
landscape.  The  suspension-bridge  of  Trollope’s  time 
has,  of  course,  long  since  disappeared,  having  been 
replaced  by  another,  built  in  1876  from  the  designs  of 
Mr.  Griffith,  which  was  a highly  picturesque  object, 
24 


1 86 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


and  was  perhaps  the  most  satisfactory  solution  yet  at- 
tained, though  by  no  means  a completely  satisfactory 
solution,  of  the  artistic  problem  involved  in  the  design 
of  a suspension  - bridge ; a problem  which  to  most  de- 
signers of  such  bridges  does  not  appear  to  be  involved 
in  it  at  all.*  It  is  very  unfortunate  that  although  the 
Minneapolitans  appreciated  this  structure  as  one  of 
their  chief  municipal  ornaments,  they  should,  never- 
theless, have  sacrificed  it  quite  ruthlessly  to  the  need 
of  greater  accommodation  ; whereas  there  could  scarcely 
have  been  any  insuperable  difficulty  in  moving  the  site 
of  the  new  bridge  that  the  new  exigencies  demanded 
so  that  the  old  might  be  preserved.  In  another  re- 
spect, Minneapolis  has  derived  a great  advantage  from 
the  capacity  and  the  necessity  of  taking  long  views 
that  are  imposed  upon  her  people  by  the  conditions 
of  their  lives.  This  is  the  reservation,  at  the  instiga- 
tion  of  a few  provident  and  public-spirited  citizens,  of 
the  three  lakes  that  lie  in  the  segment  of  a circle  a few 
miles  inland  from  the  existing  city,  and  of  the  strip  of 
land  connecting  them.  Even  now,  with  little  improve- 
ment beyond  road-making,  the  circuit  of  the  future 
parks  is  a delightful  drive;  and  when  Minneapolis  shall 
have  expanded  until  they  constitute  a bounding  boule- 
vard, the  value  of  them  as  a municipal  possession  will 
be  quite  incalculable. 

The  aspect  of  the  commercial  quarters  of  the  two 
cities  has  more  points  of  difference  than  of  resem- 
blance. The  differences  proceed  mainly  from  the  fact 
already  noted,  that  the  commercial  quarter  of  St.  Paul 
is  cramped  as  well  as  limited  by  the  topography,  and 
that  it  is  all  coming  to  be  occupied  by  a serried  mass 
of  lofty  buildings,  whereas  the  lofty  buildings  of  Min- 
neapolis are  still  detached  objects  erected  in  anticipa- 

* See  illustration,  p.  75. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


LUMBER  EXCHANGE,  MINNEAPOLIS. 
Long  & Kees,  Architects. 


tion  of  the  pressure  for  room  that  has  not  yet  begun 
to  be  felt.  It  is  an  odd  illustration  of  the  local  rivalry 
that  although  the  cities  are  so  near  together,  the  archi- 
tects are  confined  to  their  respective  fields,  and  it  is 
very  unusual,  if  not  unexampled,  that  an  architect  of 
either  is  employed  in  the  other.  Such  an  employment 
would  very  likely  be  resented  as  incivism.  Eastern 
architects  are  admitted  on  occasion  as  out  of  the  com- 
petition, but  in  the  main  each  city  is  built  according 
to  the  plans  of  the  local  designers.  The  individual 
characteristics  of  the  busiest  and  most  successful  archi- 
tects are  thus  impressed  upon  the  general  appearance 
of  the  town,  and  go  to  widen  the  difference  due  to 


jSS  AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 

natural  causes.  The  best  examples  of  commercial  archi- 
tecture in  Minneapolis,  such  as  the  Bank  of  Commerce 
and  the  Lumber  Exchange,  before  its  partial  destruc- 
tion by  fire,  have  the  same  straightforward  and  severely 
business-like  character  as  the  buildings  designed  by 
Mr.  Root  in  Chicago,  and,  indeed,  they  seem  to  owe 
not  a little  to  suggestions  derived  from  him.  The 
treatment  of  the  Lumber  Exchange,  in  particular,  indi- 
cates an  admiring  study  of  his  work.  Here  the  centre 
of  the  front  is  signalized  by  projecting  shallow  oriels 
carried  through  the  five  central  stories  of  the  building 


ENTRANCE  TO  BANK  OF  COMMERCE,  MINNEAPOLIS. 
Harry  W.  Jones,  Architect. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


I 89 

on  each  side  of  the  ample  opening  in  each  story  di- 
rectly over  the  entrance,  and  by  flanking  this  central 
bay  in  the  upper  division  with  narrow  and  solid  tur- 
rets, corbelled  and  pinnacled.  The  scheme  is  not  so 
effectively  wrought  out  as  it  deserves  to  be,  and  as  it 
might  be.  The  central  feature  is  not  developed  into 
predominance,  and  the  main  divisions  of  the  building- 
are  no  more  emphasized  in  treatment  than  the  divis- 
ions between  the  intermediate  stories.  The  observer 
may  recur  to  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield  to  express  his  re- 
gret that  the  promise  of  so  promising  a scheme  should 
not  have  been  fulfilled,  although,  in  spite  of  its  short- 
comings, the  result  is  a respectable  “ business  block.” 
These  remarks  apply  to  the  original  building,  and  not 
to  the  building  as  it  has  since  been  reconstructed  by 
the  addition  of  two  stories  which  throw  out  the  rela- 
tions of  its  parts,  and  make  it  difficult  to  decipher  the 
original  scheme.  The  Bank  of  Commerce  is  as  frankly 
utilitarian  as  the  Lumber  Exchange,  the  designer  hav- 
ing relaxed  the  restraint  imposed  upon  him  by  the 
prosaic  and  pedestrian  character  of  his  problem  only 
in  the  design  of  the  scholarly  and  rather  ornate  en- 
trances. For  the  rest,  the  architecture  is  but  the  ex- 
pression of  the  structure,  which  is  expressed  clearly 
and  with  vigor.  The  longer  front  shows  the  odd  no- 
tion of  emphasizing  the  centre  by  withdrawing  it,  a 
procedure  apparently  irrational,  which  has,  however, 
the  compensation  of  giving  value  and  detachment  to 
the  entrance  at  its  base.  The  problem  was  much  more 
promising  than  that  of  the  Lumber  Exchange,  seeing 
that  here,  with  an  ample  area,  there  are  but  six  stories 
against  ten,  and  it  is  out  of  all  comparison  better  solved. 
The  four  central  stories  are  grouped  by  piers  contin- 
ued through  them  and  connected  by  round  arches  above 
the  fifth,  while  the  first  and  sixth  are  sharply  separated 


190 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


CORNER  OF  BANK  OF  COMMERCE,  MINNEAPOLIS. 


in  treatment,  the  former  as  an  unmistakable  basement, 
with  a plain  segment  headed  opening  in  each  bay,  and 
the  latter  as  an  unmistakable  attic,  with  a triplet  of 
lintelled  and  shafted  openings  aligned  over  each  of 
the  round  arches.  The  fronts  are,  moreover,  distin- 
guished, without  in  the  least  compromising  the  utili- 
tarian purpose  of  the  structure,  by  the  use  of  the  archi- 
tectural devices  the  lack  of  which  one  deplores  in  the 
other  building,  insomuch  that  the  difference  between 
the  two  is  the  difference  between  a building  merely 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


I9I 

blocked  out  and  a finished  building,  and  suggests  again 
that  the  Lumber  Exchange  must  have  been  designed 
under  pressure.  The  building  of  the  “ Globe  ” news- 
paper, in  Minneapolis,  is  a vigorous  composition  in  Rich- 
ardsonian Romanesque,  excessively  broken  and  diver- 
sified, doubtless,  for  its  extent,  but  with  interesting 
pieces  of  detail,  and  with  a picturesque  angle  tower 
that  comes  in  very  happily  from  several  points  of  view 
of  the  business  quarter.  The  emphatic  framing  of  this 
tower  between  two  plain  piers  is  a noteworthy  point  of 
design,  and  so  is  the  use  of  the  device  that  emphasizes 
the  angles  throughout  their  whole  extent,  while  still  keep- 
ing the  vertical  lines  in  subordination  to  the  horizontal. 

O 


THE  “GLOBE”  BUILDING,  MINNEAPOLIS. 
E.  Townsend  Mix,  Architect. 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


I 92 

Among  the  business  blocks  of  St.  Paul,  the  building  of 
the  “ Pioneer  Press  ” newspaper  is  eminent  for  the  strict- 
ness with  which  the  design  conforms  itself  to  the  utili- 
tarian conditions  of  the  structure,  and  the  impressiveness 
of  the  result  attained,  not  in  spite  of  those  apparently 
forbidding  conditions,  but  by  means  of  them.  Here 
also  Mr.  Root’s  buildings,  to  which  this  praise  belongs 
in  so  high  a degree,  have  evidently  enough  inculcated 
their  lesson  upon  the  designer  of  the  present  structure. 
An  uncompromising  parallelopiped  of  brown  brick  rears 


ENTRANCE  TO  “ PIONEER  PRESS  ” BUILDING,  ST.  PAUL. 
S.  S.  Benian,  Architect. 


itself  to  the  height  of  twelve  stories,  with  no  break  at 
all  in  its  outline,  and  with  no  architecture  that  is  not 
evolved  directly  from  the  requirements  of  the  building. 
One  does  not  seem  to  be  praising  a man  very  highly  to 
praise  him  for  talking  prose  when  he  has  a prosaic  sub- 
ject. A mere  incompetency  to  poetry  would  apparently 
suffice  to  earn  this  moderate  eulogy.  Yet,  in  fact,  noth- 
ing is  much  rarer  in  our  architecture  than  the  power  to 
deny  one’s  self  irrelevant  beauties.  The  “ Pioneer  Press" 
building  is  a basement  of  three  stories,  the  first  story  of 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


!9  3 


the  brick-work  counting  in  with 
the  two-story  substructure  of  ma- 
sonry, carrying  a superstructure 
of  seven,  crowned  with  an  attic 
of  two.  This  latter  feature 
proceeds,  doubtless,  from 
the  special  requirement 
of  a newspaper  office 
superposed  upon  a 
business  block,  and  it 
may  be  inferred  that  to 
this  requirement  is  due 
the  greater  enrichment  of 
the  lower  of  the  two  attic 
stories,  contrary  to  the  usual 
arrangement,  and  testifying  the 
architect’s  belief,  mistaken  or 
not,  that  the  editorial  function  is 
of  more  dignity  and  worthier  of 
celebration  than  the  typographical. 

At  any  rate,  the  unusual  disposi- 
tion is  architecturally  fortunate, 
since  it  provides,  in  the  absolute- 
ly plain  openings  of  what  is  pre- 
sumably the  composing-room,  a 
grateful  interval  between  the  com- 
parative  richness  of  the  arcades 
beneath  and  of  the  cornice  above. 

In  the  main  front,  the  ample  en- 
trance at  the  centre  supplies  a 
visible  motive  for  the  vertical  as 
well  as  for  the  subordinate  lateral 

division.  It  is  developed  through  the  three  stories  of  the 
basement,  and  it  is  recognized  in  a prolongation  upward 
of  its  flanking  piers  through  the  central  division — which 


CORNER  OF  “PIONEER  PRESS  ” 
BUILDING. 


25 


194 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


is  completed  by  round  arches,  the  spandrels  of  which  are 
decorated — and  through  the  attic,  so  as  to  effect  a triple 
division  for  the  front.  The  unostentatious  devices  are 
highly  effective  by  which  the  monotony  that  would  re- 
sult from  an  identical  treatment  of  the  seven  central 
stories  is  relieved,  while  the  impression  made  by  the 
magnitude  of  such  a mass  is  retained.  The  terminal 
piers  are  left  entirely  unbroken  throughout  all  their 
extent,  except  for  a continuous  string  course  above  the 
eighth  story,  which  might  better  have  been  omitted, 
since  it  cuts  the  intermediate  piers  very  awkwardly,  and 
detracts  from  the  value  of  the  heavier  string  course  only 
one  story  higher  that  has  an  evident  reason  of  being, 
as  the  springing  course  of  the  arcade;  while  the  inter- 
mediate piers  are  crossed  by  string  courses  above  the 
fifth  and  the  ninth  stories,  so  as  to  give  to  the  central 
and  dominant  feature  of  the  main  composition  a triple 
division  of  its  own  into  a beginning,  a middle,  and  an 
end. 

The  building  is  very  successful,  and  the  more  suc- 
cessful because  the  designer  lias  shirked  nothing  and 
blinked  nothing,  but  out  of  this  nettle,  commercial  de- 
mands, has  plucked  this  flower,  commercial  architecture. 
The  same  praise  of  an  entire  relevancy  to  its  purpose 
belongs  to  the  Bank  of  Minnesota,  a well-proportioned 
and  well-divided  piece  of  masonry,  in  spite  of  more 
effort  at  variety  in  outline,  and  of  somewhat  more  of  fan- 
tasy in  detail.  The  former  is  manifested  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  roof,  in  which  the  gables  of  the  upper  story 
are  relieved  against  a low  mansard  ; and  the  latter  in 
the  design  of  these  gables  and  of  the  rich  and  effective 
entrance.  The  problem,  as  one  of  composition,  is  very 
much  simplified  here,  since  the  building  is  but  of  six 
stories,  and  the  dilemma  of  monotony  or  miscellany, 
which  so  awfully  confronts  the  designers  of  ten  and 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


*95 


BANK  OF  MINNESOTA,  ST.  PAUL. 

Wilcox  & Johnson,  Architects. 

twelve  story  buildings,  does  not  present  itself.  The  two 
lower  stories,  though  quite  differently  detailed,  are  here 
grouped  into  an  architectural  basement,  the  grouping 
being  emphasized  in  the  main  front  by  the  extension  of 
the  entrance  through  both.  The  superstructure  is  of 
three  stories,  quite  identical  and  very  plain  in  treatment, 
and  above  is  the  lighter  and  more  open  fenestration  of 
the  gabled  attic. 

Of  far  more  extent  and  pretension  than  this,  being 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


appropriateness,  as  a housing  and  an  expression  of  the 
local  genius,  for  assuredly  there  is  nothing  quaint  about 
the  Western  business  man  or  his  procedures  during 
business  hours,  however  quaint  and  even  picturesque 
one  may  find  him  when  relaxing  into  anecdote  in  his 
hours  of  ease.  The  building  owes  its  quaintness  in 
great  part  to  the  division  of  its  superstructure  into  two 
unequal  masses  flanking  a narrow  court,  at  the  base  of 
which  is  the  main  entrance.  The  general  arrangement 
is  not  uncommon  in  the  business  blocks  of  New  York. 
The  unequal  division  into  masses,  of  which  one  is  just 
twice  as  wide  as  the  other,  looks  capricious  in  the  pres- 
ent detached  condition  of  the  building;  though  when 


196 

indeed  perhaps  the  costliest  and  most  “ important  ” of 
all  the  business  block  of  St.  Paul,  is  the  building  of  the 
New  York  Life  Insurance  Company.  In  saying  that 
the  total  impression  of  this  edifice  is  one  of  picturesque 
quaintness,  one  seems  to  deny  its  typicalness,  if  not  its 


TOP  OF  NEW  YORK  LIFE  INSURANCE  BUILDING,  ST.  PAUL. 
Babb,  Cook,  & Willard,  Architects. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


197 


another  lofty  building  abuts  upon  it,  the  inequality  will 
be  seen  to  be  a sensible  precaution  to  secure  the  effec- 
tive lighting  of  the  narrower  mass,  the  light  for  the 
wider  being  secured  by  a street  upon  one  side  as  well 
as  by  the  court  upon  the  other.  Even  so,  this  will  not 
be  so  intuitively  beheld  as  the  fact  of  the  inequality 
itself,  and  as  the  differences  of  treatment  to  which  it 
gives  rise  and  by  which  it  is  emphasized  ; for  the  quaint- 
ness resulting  from  the  asymmetry  is  so  far  from  being 
ungrateful  to  the  designer  that  he  has  seized  upon  it 
with  avidity,  and  developed  it  by  all  the  means  in  his 
power.  Ouaintness  is  the  word  that  everybody  uses 
spontaneously  to  express  the  character  of  the  Dutch 
and  Flemish  Renaissance,  and  the  treatment  of  these 
unequal  gables  is  obviously  derived  from  Flemish  ex- 
amples. The  origin  of  their  crow  steps  and  ailerons  is 
unmistakable,  and  the  treatment  of  the  grouped  and 
somewhat  huddled  openings,  and  their  wreathed  pedi- 
ments and  bull’s-eyes,  richly  and  heavily  framed  in 
terra-cotta,  is  equally  characteristic,  to  the  point  of  be- 
ing baroque.  This  character  is  quite  evidently  meant, 
and  the  picturesqueness  that  results  from  it  is  undeni- 
able, and  gives  the  building  its  prevailing  expression ; 
howbeit  it  is  confined  to  the  gables,  the  trearment  of 
the  substructure  being  as  “ architecturesque  ” as  that 
of  the  superstructure  is  picturesque.  A simple  and 
massive  basement  of  two  stories  in  masonry  carries 
the  five  stories  of  brick-work  heavily  quoined  in  stone 
that  constitute  the  body  of  the  building,  and  this  is 
itself  subdivided  by  slight  but  sufficient  differences, 
the  lower  story  being  altogether  of  masonry,  and 
the  upper  arcaded.  An  intermediate  story,  emphati- 
cally marked  off  above  and  below,  separates  this  body 
from  the  two-story  roof,  the  gables  of  which  we  have 
been  considering.  The  main  entrance,  which  gives  ac- 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


is  evident,  and  also  the  elegance  of  the  detail  in  its  kind 
and  in  its  place;  but  it  does  not  seem  to  be  in  its  place 
anywhere  out-of-doors,  and  still  less  as  applied  to  the 
entrance  of  a business  block  to  which  it  is  merely  ap- 
plied, and  from  which  it  is  not  developed.  Its  extreme 
delicacy,  indeed,  almost  gives  the  impression  that  it  is 


ENTRANCE  TO  NEW  YORK  LIFE  INSURANCE  BUILDING,  ST.  PAUL. 


cess  to  a stately  and  sumptuous  corridor,  seems  itself 
extraneous  to  the  building,  having  little  congruity  either 
with  the  straightforward  and  structural  treatment  of 
the  main  building,  or  with  the  bulbous  picturesqueness 
of  the  gables.  The  care  with  which  its  detail  is  studied 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


I99 


meant  to  be  a still  small  voice  of  scholarly  protest  on 
the  part  of  an  “Eastern”  architect  against  a “boisterous 
and  rough-hewn  ” Westernness.  A still  smaller  voice 
of  protest  seems  to  be  emitted  by  the  design  of  the 
Endicott  Arcade,  the  voice  of  one  crying,  very  softly, 
in  the  wilderness.  So  ostentatiously  discreet  is  the 
detail  of  this  building,  indeed,  so  minute  the  scale  of 
it,  and  so  studious  the  avoidance  of  anything  like  stress 
and  the  effort  for  understatement,  that  the  very  quietness 
of  its  remonstrance  gives  it  the  effect  of  vociferation. 

“ He  who  in  quest  of  quiet  ‘ Silence  ’ hoots, 

Is  apt  to  make  the  hubbub  he  imputes.” 

It  seems  to  be  an  explicit  expostulation,  for  example, 
with  the  architect  of  the  Guaranty  Loan  Building  in 
Minneapolis,  which  has  many  striking  details  not  with- 
out ingenuity,  and  certainly  not  without  “ enterprise,” 
but  as  certainly  without  the  refinement  that  comes  of  a 
studied  and  affectionate  elaboration,  insomuch  that  this 

also  may  be  admitted  to  be  W n,  and  to  invite  the 

full  force  of  Dryden’s  criticism.  The  building  in  the 
exterior  of  which  this  mild  remonstrance  is  made  has  an 
interior  feature  that  is  noteworthy  for  other  qualities 
than  the  avoidance  of  indiscretion  ancl  overstatement — 
the  “arcade,”  so  called,  from  which  it  takes  its  name — a 
broad  corridor,  sumptuous  in  material  and  treatment  to 
the  “palatial”  point,  one’s  admiration  for  which  is  not 
destroyed,  though  it  is  abated,  by  a consideration  of  its 
irrelevancy  to  a business  block.  The  building  of  the 
New  York  Life  in  Minneapolis,  by  the  same  architects 
as  the  building  of  the  same  corporation  in  St.  Paul,  is 
more  readily  recognizable  by  a New-Yorker  as  their 
work.  It  is  a much  more  commonplace  and  a much 
more  utilitarian  composition — a basement  of  four  sto- 
ries, of  which  two  are  in  masonry,  carrying  a central 
division  also  of  four  and  an  attic  of  two,  the  superstruct- 


200 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


ure  being  of  brick-work.  The  two  principal  divisions 
are  too  nearly  equal ; nor  does  the  change  of  material 
effected  by  building  the  two  upper  stories  of  the 
basement  in  brick-work  achieve  the  rhythmic  relation 
for  the  attainment  of  which  it  was  doubtless  intro- 
duced. But  the  structure  is  nevertheless  a more  satis- 
factory example  of  commercial  architecture  than  the 
St.  Paul  building.  Its  entrance,  of  four  fluted  and 
banded  columns  of  a very  free  Roman  Doric,  with  the 
platform  on  consoles  above,  has  strength  and  dignity, 
and  is  a feature  that  can  evidently  be  freely  exposed  to 
the  weather,  and  that  is  not  incongruous  as  the  portal 
of  a great  commercial  building.  A very  noteworthy 
feature  of  the  interior  is  the  double  spiral  staircase  in 


NEW  YORK  LIFE  INSURANCE  BUILDING,  MINNEAPOLIS. 
Babb,  Cook,  & Willard,  Architects. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


201 


metal  that  has  apparently  been  inspired  by  the  famous 
rood  screen  of  St.  Etienne  du  Mont  in  Paris,  and 
that  is  a very  taking  and  successful  design,  in  which 
the  treatment  of  the  material  is  ingenious  and  charac- 
teristic. 

We  have  seen  that  the  huddled  condition  of  the 
business  quarter  of  St.  Paul,  practically  a disadvantage 
in  comparison  with  the  spaciousness  of  Minneapolis, 
has  become  architecturally  a positive  advantage.  The 
natural  advantages  with  respect  to  the  quarters  of  resi- 
dence seem  to  be  strongly  on  the  side  of  St.  Paul.  The 
26 


202 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


river-front  at  Minneapolis  is  not  available  for  house- 
building, nor  is  there  any  other  topographical  indica- 
tion of  a fashionable  quarter,  except  what  is  furnished 
by  the  slight  undulations  of  the  plateau.  The  more 
pretentious  houses  are  for  the  most  part  scattered,  and, 
of  course,  much  more  isolated  than  the  towering  com- 
mercial buildings.  On  the  other  hand,  the  fashionable 
quarter  of  St.  Paul  is  distinctly  marked  out  by  nature. 
It  could  not  have  been  established  anywhere  but  at  the 
edge  of  the  bluff  overhanging  the  town  and  command- 
ing  the  Mississippi.  Surely  this  height  must  have  been 
one  of  those  eminences  that  struck  the  imagination  of 
Trollope  when  they  were  yet  unoccupied.  And  now 
the  “noble  residences”  have  come  to  crown  the  hill- 
side, and  really  noble  residences  many  of  them  are. 


DWELLING  IN  MINNEAPOLIS. 
Harry  W.  Jones,  Architect. 


There  are  perhaps  as  skilfully  designed  houses  in  the 
younger  city,  and  certainly  there  are  houses  as  costly ; 
but  there  is  nothing  to  be  compared  with  the  massing 
of  the  handsome  houses  of  St.  Paul  upon  the  ridge 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


203 


above  the  river.  Indeed,  there  are  very  few  streets  in 
the  United  States  that  give  in  as  high  a degree  as 
Summit  Avenue  the  sense  of  an  expenditure  liberal 
without  ostentation,  directed  by  skill,  and  restrained  by 
taste.  What  mainly  strikes  a pilgrim  from  the  East 
is  not  so  much  the  merit  of  the  best  of  these  houses,  as 
the  fact  that  there  are  no  bad  ones ; none,  at  least,  so 
bad  as  to  disturb  the  general  impression  of  richness  and 
refinement,  and  none  that  make  the  crude  display  of 
“new  money”  that  is  to  be  seen  in  the  fashionable 
quarters  of  cities  even  richer  and  far  older.  The  houses 
rise,  to  borrow  one  of  Ruskin’s  eloquent  phrases,  “ in 
fair  fulfilment  of  domestic  service  and  modesty  of  home 
seclusion.”  The  air  of  completeness,  of  finish,  of  “keep- 
ing,” so  rare  in  American  towns,  is  here  as  marked  as 
at  Newport.  In  the  architecture  there  is  a wide  variety, 
which  does  not,  however,  suffice  to  destroy  the  homo- 
geneousness of  the  total  effect.  Suggestions  from  the 
Romanesque  perhaps  prevail,  and  testify  anew  to  the 


204  AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 

influence  of  Richardson,  though  there  are  suggestions 
from  the  Renaissance  and  from  pointed  architecture 
that  show  scholarship  as  well  as  invention.  The  clever- 
ness and  ingenuity  of  a porte-cochere  of  two  pointed 
arches  are  not  diminished  by  the  likelihood  that  it  was 
suggested  by  a canopied  tomb  in  a cathedral.  But,  in- 
deed, from  whatever  source  the  inspiration  of  the  archi- 
tects may  have  come,  it  is  everywhere  plain  that  they 
have  had  no  intention  of  presenting  “examples”  of  his- 
torical architecture,  and  highly  unlikely  that  they  would 
be  disturbed  by  the  detection  in  their  work  of  solecisms 
that  were  such  merely  from  the  academic  point  of  view. 
It  is  scarcely  worth  while  to  go  into  specific  criticism  of 
their  domestic  work.  To  illustrate  it  is  to  show  that  the 
designers  of  the  best  of  it  are  quite  abreast  of  the  archi- 
tects of  the  older  parts  of  the  country,  and  that  they 


PORTE-COCHERE,  ST.  PAUL. 
Wilcox  & Johnson,  Architects. 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


205 


MsaLvit.il  if, 


-c™' . j 


PORCH  IN  ST.  PAUL. 

Mould  & McNichol,  Architects. 

are  able  to  command  an  equal  skill  of  craftsmanship  in 
the  execution  of  their  designs. 

This  does  not  answer  our  question  whether  there  is 
any  such  thing  as  Western  architecture,  or  whether  these 
papers  should  not  rather  have  been  entitled  “ Glimpses 
of  Architecture  in  the  West.”  The  interest  in  this  art 
throughout  the  West  is  at  least  as  general  as  the  interest 
in  it  throughout  the  East,  and  it  is  attested  in  the  twin 
cities  by  the  existence  of  a flourishing  and  enterprising 
periodical,  the  “Northwestern  Architect,”  to  which  I am 
glad  to  confess  my  obligations.  It  is  natural  that  this 
interest,  when  joined  to  an  intense  local  patriotism, 
should  lead  to  a magnifying  of  the  Westernness  of  such 
structures  as  are  the  subjects  of  local  pride.  It  is  com- 
mon enough  to  hear  the  same  local  patriot  who  declaims 
to  you  in  praise  of  Western  architecture  explain  also 


206 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


FROM  A DWELT, ING  IN  ST.  PAUL. 

Gilbert  & Taylor,  Architects. 

that  the  specimens  of  it  which  he  commends  to  your 
admiration  are  the  work  of  architects  of  “ Eastern”  birth 
or  training.  Now,  if  not  in  Dickens’s  time,  tire  “ man 
of  Boston  raisin’  ” is  recognized  in  the  West  to  have 
his  uses.  The  question  whether  there  is  any  American 
architecture  is  not  yet  so  triumphantly  answered  that  it 
is  other  than  provincial  to  lay  much  stress  on  local 
differences.  The  general  impression  that  the  Eastern 
observer  derives  from  Western  architecture  is  the  same 
that  American  architecture  in  general  makes  upon  the 
European  observer;  and  that  is,  that  it  is  a very  much 
emancipated  architecture.  Our  architects  are  assuredly 
less  trammelled  by  tradition  than  those  of  any  older 
countries,  and  the  architects  of  the  West  are  even  less 
trammelled  than  those  of  the  East.  Their  characteristic 
buildings  show  this  characteristic  equally,  whether  they 
be  qood  or  bad.  The  towerinq-  commercial  structures 
that  are  forced  upon  them  by  new  conditions  and 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


207 


facilities  are  very  seldom  specimens  of  any  historical 
style  ; and  the  best  and  the  worst  of  these,  the  most  and 
the  least  studied,  are  apt  to  be  equally  hard  to  classify. 
To  be  emancipated  is  not  a merit ; and  to  judge  whether 
or  not  it  is  an  advantage,  one  needs  to  examine  the 
performances  in  which  the  emancipation  is  exhibited. 
“ That  a good  man  be  ‘ free,’  as  we  call  it,”  says  Carlyle, 
in  one  of  his  most  emphatic  Jeremiads — “be  permitted 
to  unfold  himself  in  works  of  goodness  and  nobleness — 
is  surely  a blessing  to  him,  immense  and  indispensable; 


DWELLINGS  IN  ST.  PAUL. 
Wilcox  & Johnson,  Architects. 


208 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


to  him  and  to  those  about  him.  But  that  a bad  man  be 
‘free’ — permitted  to  unfold  himself  in  his  particular  way 
—is,  contrariwise,  the  fatallest  curse  you  could  inflict 
upon  him ; curse,  and  nothing  else,  to  him  and  all  his 
neighbors.” 

There  is  here  not  a question  of  morals,  but  of  knowl- 
edge and  competency.  The  restraints  in  architecture 
of  a recognized  school,  of  a prevailing  style,  are  useful 
and  salutary  in  proportion  to  the  absence  of  restraint 
that  the  architect  is  capable  of  imposing  upon  himself. 
The  secular  tradition  of  French  architecture,  imposed 
by  public  authority  and  inculcated  by  official  academics, 
is  felt  as  a trammel  by  many  architects,  who,  neverthe- 
less, have  every  reason  to  feel  grateful  for  the  power  of 
design  which  this  same  official  curriculum  has  trained  and 
developed.  In  England  the  fear  of  the  archaeologists 
and  of  the  ecclesiologists  operated,  during  the  period  of 
modern  Gothic  at  least,  with  equal  force,  though  with- 
out any  official  sanction.  To  be  “ ungrammatical,”  not 
to  adopt  a particular  phase  of  historical  architecture, 
and  not  to  coniine  one’s  self  to  it  in  a design,  was  there 
the  unforgivable  offence,  even  though  the  incongruities 
that  resulted  from  transcending  it  were  imperceptible  to 
an  artist  and  obvious  only  to  an  archaeologist.  A de- 
signer thoroughly  trained  under  either  of  these  systems, 
and  then  transferred  to  this  country  as  a practitioner, 
must  feel,  as  many  such  a practitioner  has  in  fact  felt, 
that  he  was  suddenly  unshackled,  and  that  his  emanci- 
pation was  an  unmixed  advantage  to  him  ; but  it  is  none 
the  less  true  that  his  power  to  use  his  liberty  wisely  came 
from  the  discipline  that  was  now  relaxed.  The  academ- 
ic prolusions  of  the  Beaux  Arts,  or  the  exercises  of  a 
draughtsman,  have  served  their  purpose  in  qualifying 
him  for  independent  design.  The  advocates  of  the  cur- 
riculum of  the  English  public  schools  maintain  that,  ob- 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


209 


JPORCH  IN  ST.  PAUL. 

A.  H.  Stein,  Architect. 

solete  as  it  seems,  even  the  practice  of  making  Latin 
verses  has  its  great  benefits  in  imparting  to  the  pupil 
the  command  of  literary  form  and  of  beauty  of  diction. 
There  are  many  examples  to  sustain  this  contention,  as 
well  as  the  analogous  contention  that  a faithful  study 
and  reproduction  of  antique  or  of  mediaeval  architecture 
are  highly  useful,  if  not  altogether  indispensable,  to  cul- 
tivate an  architect’s  power  of  design.  Only  it  may  be 
27 


2 lO 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE 


pointed  out  that  the  use  of  these  studies  is  to  enable 
the  student  to  express  himself  with  more  power  and  grace 
in  the  vernacular,  and  that  one  no  longer  reverts  to  Latin 
verse  when  he  has  really  something  to  say.  The  mon- 
uments that  are  accepted  as  models  by  the  modern  world 
are  themselves  the  results  of  the  labors  of  successive  sren- 

O 

erations.  It  was  by  a secular  process  that  the  same 
structural  elements  employed  at  Thebes  and  Karnac 
were  developed  to  the  perfection  of  the  Parthenon.  In 
proportion  to  the  newness  of  their  problems  it  is  to  be 
expected  that  the  efforts  of  our  architects  will  be  crude; 
but  there  is  a vast  difference  between  the  crudity  of  a 
serious  and  matured  attempt  to  do  a new  thing  and  the 
crudity  of  mere  ignorance  and  self-sufficiency.  Evi- 
dently the  progress  of  American  architecture  will  not 
be  promoted  by  the  labors  of  designers,  whether  they 
be  “Western”  or  “Eastern,”  who  have  merely  “lived 
in  the  alms  basket  ” of  architectural  forms,  and  whose 
notion  of  architecture  consists  in  multiplying  “features,” 
as  who  should  think  to  enhance  the  expressiveness  of 
the  human  countenance  by  adorning  it  with  two  noses. 

One  cannot  neologize  with  any  promise  of  success 
unless  he  knows  what  is  already  in  the  dictionary;  and 
a professional  equipment  that  puts  its  owner  really  in 
possession  of  the  best  that  has  been  done  in  the  world 
is  indispensable  to  successful  eclecticism  in  architecture. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  equally  true  that  no  progress 
can  result  from  the  labors  of  architects  whose  training 
has  made  them  so  fastidious  that  they  are  more  revolted 
by  the  crudity  of  the  forms  that  result  from  the  attempt 
to  express  a new  meaning  than  by  the  failure  to  make 
the  attempt,  and  so  conceal  what  they  are  really  doing 
behind  a mask  of  historical  architecture,  of  which  the 
elegance  is  quite  irrelevant.  This  latter  fault  is  that  of 
modern  architecture  in  general.  I he  history  of  that 


GLIMPSES  OF  WESTERN  ARCHITECTURE 


2 I I 


architecture  indicates  that  it  is  a fault  even  more  un- 
promising of  progress  than  the  crudities  of  an  emanci- 
pated architecture,  in  which  the  discipline  of  the  designer 
fails  to  supply  the  place  of  the  artificial  check  of  an  his- 
torical style.  It  is  more  feasible  to  tame  exuberances 
than  to  create  a soul  under  the  ribs  of  death.  The 
emancipation  of  American  architecture  is  thus  ulti- 
mately more  hopeful  than  if  it  were  put  under  aca- 
demic bonds  to  keep  the  peace.  It  may  freely  be  ad- 
mitted that  many  of  its  manifestations  are  not  for  the 
present  joyous,  but  grievous,  and  that  to  throw  upon 
the  individual  designer  the  responsibility  withheld  from 
a designer  with  whom  fidelity  to  style  is  the  first  duty 
is  a process  that  fails  when  his  work,  as  has  been  wit- 
tily said,  ‘ shows  no  more  self-restraint  than  a bunch  of 
fire-crackers.”  But  these  papers  have  also  borne  wit- 
ness that  there  are  among  the  emancipated  practition- 
ers of  architecture  in  the  West  men  who  have  shown 
that  they  can  use  their  liberty  wisely,  and  whose  work 
can  be  hailed  as  among  the  hopeful  beginnings  of  a na- 
tional architecture. 


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